Hi everyone, a small survey from Jimmy!

How many of you still uses an egg bag?
This is a classic and I am playing with this for a while.

Which egg bag is your favourite and care to share your favourite routine too?

I have used several versions of the egg bag over the years. My first was a red wool flannel version. I think it was sold by Irelands Magic, but may have been home made. It was an almost Malini version of the egg bag. That is, it was gimmicked in a very similar manner as the classic Malini.

I have used both the Malini (I have two made by Danny Tong’s wife, need the second one for a bottle production at the end), and the Mardo version (made by Martin Lewis’ mother!). Both have their strengths. I use the classic Ken Brooke’s routine with the Malini and the Martin Lewis routine with the Mardo. Like both but they never really stuck with me.

The bag I use most often and is my all-time favorite is a Tarbell bag that I made myself over fifteen years ago. I keep trying the different versions and always come back to my old standard.

By comparison my Malini and Mardo bags are new (Malini about 8 or nine years old and the Mardo only 4 years old). As I said, they are good but…

The routine that I use (and keep coming back to) is one by Roy Benson (of the Benson Bowl fame). In it, a fairly standard egg bag routine is started with the egg vanishing etc. The bag is continually shown empty, twisted and beat, yet the routine ends with several (six) eggs being poured out of the bag. It is a most astonishing routine! Leave it to genius of Roy Benson! Of course the routine was “new” in the late 1940’s and is almost impossible to find in print today.

Thanks for sharing. I would like to learn more about the interesting routine that you had shared.

Where can I start looking? Is there a video tape on this routine?

No commercial videotape of that routine. I think that Peter Marucci and I are probably the only performers around that use the routine. Actually, I have never run across another magician, other than Peter, that even knew about the routine! Even those who had the reference book had either overlooked or forgotten the routine.

The only place I know of it being published is in the, now out of print (and in my opinion one of the best general magic books ever published), “Classic Secrets of Magic” by Bruce Elliott.

Thanks for the advice!

You can also find Benson's Egg Bag Routine in the recently published "The Encycopedia of Egg Magic" by Donato Colucci from Hermetic Press.

I use a home-made Malini-style bag regularly in my kids shows. (It's home-made because I've only seen black ones and I wanted something more colourful. Kath made mine out of a satiny red and black striped material. It looks fine - apart from a kid once saying they were my boxer shorts!)

I intitially got the moves from Trevor Lewis's childrens magic notes - they're also in one of his Party Pieces books. Good step by step drawings.

There's also a very good Egg Bag video put out by Stevens Emporium - you can see Martin Lewis, Tom Mullica, Billy McComb, Charlie Miller and Johnny Thompson show and explain their handlings.
There's also a very comprehensive Egg Bag Book by John Novak.
They're both worth the investment IMHO.

Because I use it for kids, I can get handling ideas from these sources, but had to add lots of nonsense. I played around with rubber fried eggs and such, but now I get, first my two assistants, then the whole audience to stand with me and do the chicken dance to make the magic work!

Cheers,

Bill