Tornado Box is a Mickael Chatelain (MC) gimmick that gives you the power to instantly vanish or materialize ink or text on the outside of a card box. You can reveal a prediction, a selected card or use it in a mentalism routine.
With your $26.95 purchase you get a gimmick, some extra parts that need to be applied and a link to a 17 minute password protected vimeo instructional video taught by MC, There is one video in French and one in English. I watched the English video which is taught by MC. The production quality is way below average because it consists of MC sitting on a couch in what appears to be his apartment in front of a stationary camera. MC also teaches how to use his gimmick in his rudimentary English. Notwithstanding the poor English, it is easy to understand what he is saying, it is just a bit, well, annoying. After MC teaches you how to set up the gimmick, which takes no more than about a minute, he shows numerous ideas on how to use the gimmick, set to music and no voice. He presents many very strong ideas, which are not new to magic, bit nicely applied to the Tornado Box. You will need to supply your own card box, which must be a red rider backed Bicycle tuck box.
When using the Tornado Box, you use a dry erase marker and write directly on the box. The core effect is presented with writing on the box that changes to different writing. For example, an incorrect reveal card rights itself, or a drawn object morphs into another object. The effect is very easy to learn and very easy to perform. There are some slight angles to be aware of with this gimmick. The gimmick does make some noise, which can be heard in a room with even moderate background noise so I would recommend using this in a bar or noisy restaurant setting. The reset take a split second and you can do it as you turn around so the spectators cannot see what you are doing. The box cannot be handed out for inspection. Additionally, I found that there is some ability of the naked eye to detect what is happening (giving a clue to the method), which may entice the spectator to request inspection of the card box. I found that lower light covers this significantly – again look for a bar setting.
Overall, I like this trick and enjoy the gimmick which is very clever and cool. I like that you can write and wipe away the text or images and change it up every time you use this very versatile gimmick.
You can find this cool gimmick at any Murphy’s Magic dealer!