I would like to know, what in your opinion are the best tenyo mentalism effects.
I just purchased "fortune donut" and it's great, so I ordered the "fortune sticks",
any ideas on what to get next?
BTW, I'd rather it won't invovle playing cards...
and off course, it needs to be something still available,

Thx

Future Clock comes to mind, very direct mentalism. I also like mindscanner, which serves a mindreading purposes obviously. Both are available, although not necessarily through the usual dealers...

Bird Watcher and Grand Derby prediction are my two favorite Mental Tenyo effects. Although difficult to find Diabolicus is a favorite of many here as well. You will enjoy Fortune Sticks, has been well reviewed by many.

John

Diabolicus. Watch eBay and save your pennies. Lots and LOTS of pennies.

David

Right, that's another great recommendation!!

Cool thread! Without using cards, I'd add Vault-Vision, Occult Board/Menta-Marvel, Eye Of The Idol & Match-Sticks. All discontinued, but fairly easy to locate.

My Wife figured out DIABOLICUS within 10 minutes of performing the trick.

It's technically quite clever but it's not too tough to figure out. If you perform it with a silk/hankie, better, again, brilliant magical engineering, I would say just decent as a trick. Do you have any special methods for performance?

Eye of the Idol is the best IMHO

Match sticks for me

Funny how it goes. You can mystify 99% of the planet with some razzle-dazzle illusion, but show wife, & she'll solve it in like 5-10 minutes. What's up with dat? What is this space-time continium busting, ego breakin' phenomenon? I'm afflicted, Houdini 103126 has suffered, Killertweety has refered to this before also I believe. Whoa is us humble illusionists.

Thanks for all the info ,BTW, any chance of telling me where to get all those tenyo's that are not available on ebay and such?

PM me or write a mail, I have lots on mint vintage stuff: http://www.65roses.de for a small overview (more to be added).

Felix

My personal favourites are the same as J M Talbot ones: Grand Derby Prediction and Bird Watcher - easy to do, almost impossible to figure out, a nice story/presentation is possible when performing the effect and they always gave me a great response from the audience!

Other great effects:
- Mystic Scope is just fun to play with and the props look 'cute' (according to misses Killertweety ) - it's an improvement over Hyper Vision as most of you know because there is a locking mechanism.
- Mental Marvel: also a big improvement over the classic 'Occult Board'. The props feel very professional and look great.
- Ghost Lamp should be (is) great too but I'm still working on a 'slimmer' gimmick.

Some personal thoughts about ...
- Diabolicus: very clever gimmick. However for me there are better mentalism effects; I mean, place a block with a chosen symbol on top in a box and the magician will guess what symbol it is ... there are so many effects that have this 'setup'/effect ... (Mummy Mystery, Die-Vision, the trick with a die and two black boxes with a red lid (I cant remember what it's called) etc. ...);
- Mindscanner: I find it to be a bit 'bulky'. In stead of buying a second Mindscanner as a 'spare' for myself (I like to have spares of the items that may 'brake' over time ...) I bought a John Cornelius Thought Transmitter and it is far superior in every way (and it's cheaper nowadays ) ... but it's not Tenyo of course
- Eye Of The Idle, an EXCELLENT and VERY special/particular effect - I love it! However ... you need to be very carefull no to move 'some parts' - I've been 'busted' more then once

'Let downs' are in my opinion:
- as Wank already mentioned in another thread, X-Ray File isn't as good as what people are paying for it these days (among a lot of other discontinued Tenyo of course ) - you really need excellent light conditions and a very good eyesight! Nonetheless, a very clever gimmick.
- Fortune Donut, also mentioned by Wank (I think): if you're not very carefull it doesn't work and above all ... it needs refills.


By the way, one of the tricks I'm missing in my collection is Image Generator (the T-shirt) ... any opininions about this? And does anyone have (a clean ) one for sale or trade?

Image Generator basically bases upon a simple force of two pairs of objects, which (combined) result in the picture shown on the back of the shirt.
Nice idea, mildly baffling, imho.
I don't like that there is counting involved, though...

It's like Nicolino states...nice idea, mildly baffling, based on picture association. The cool bit is that it's on a T-shirt (I know of no other illusion using clothing, except the tie gag), & it at 1st appears to be kind of spontaneous to the spectator. It's better if you have a lovely assistant to wear it. Wow, just noticed...50th post. Coolio bonus!

Bird Watcher

Thanks Felix,
I will go over the list...

Bird Watcher may be a bit on the corny side for many, but it is one of the few Tenyo items where you can build an entire routine around and not just a quick trick. Each phase builds drama over the previous.

Bird watcher, hands down.

Bird Watcher gets my vote. I just got mine a few weeks ago and it's quite clever.