Inside Magic Review: Viking’s Impossible PenetrationInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

Impossible Penetration by Viking Magic is one heck of a well-made prop and a great trick. Even if you never use it in a performance ? which would be a shame ? you will have a beautifully designed and crafted item that just looks magical.

How did it hold up under the Inside Magic Review? Is it still politically correct to simulate the chopping off of fingers? Why am I putting the effect up for sale even though it is barely used and still in pristine condition? Could I really just be buying tricks to review and then selling them? Am I made of money? Do you hear voices sometimes too?

First things first. If you are going to buy Impossible Penetration, buy the real product as manufactured by the great George Robinson. George is the only manufacturer of the actual licensed product and although you’ll soon find imitations available from Asia, they cannot compare in quality. More importantly, the knock-off versions are counterfeit and improperly attempt to steal money from the proper license holder for Impossible Penetration. Enough preaching. By the way, the item I’ve put up for sale is an authentic George Robinson produced and licensed Impossible Penetration.

The effect is a lot like this: You show a beautiful wooden houlette and a wooden blade. The houlette opens at the top and can be separated into two pieces attached by a hinge at the base. The blade has a hole cut into the center that lines up neatly with the hole formed when the two parts of the houlette are put together. You ask your spectator to put her dainty finger (although it will work with a large grease-covered pig-knuckle type finger but who wants to see that) through the hole in houlette. She looks at you with that look that says, “Are you going to describe this later in some…

You take the wooden blade and shove it down into the houlette and through the dainty finger. The finger remains connected to the hand of the spectator ? without the use of any prosthetics or tendon reformation surgery ? and you now open the houlette from around the blade and the dainty finger is holding the blade.

Everything, including my past, can be examined. In the case of the props for this amazing effect, nothing will be found. In the case of me and my past, there is a certain matter that I can’t really describe here because of the onerous litigation rules of the Philippines and Micronesia. Regardless, even with an allegedly checkered past, you can perform this effect and allow the spectators to examine the props to their hearts’ content.

(As a side note, when is the heart truly contented. I thought that after Claudia left David and we had our brief but memorable time together out of the limelight, I was content. After all, the most beautiful woman in the world (present company excepted ? assuming you are a woman reading this, or my wife) had left David Copperfield to be with me. What more could a bar-fly ask for ? other than more pretzels? But I found that it wasn’t enough: even having Claudia referring to me with her cute pet name, “Boy,” and asking me to help her do things like “get my car, Boy!” or “stop staring me, Boy!” So the heart is a fickle thing and my heart was even fickler than most. I took it personally that she left the island resort where we were staying ? she was a guest and I was like a guest but wasn’t really registered with the front desk ? and I took it personally that she would leave without telling me she was leaving or that I should get out of the way of her car as she zoomed down the driveway towards the airport. But that’s me, I’m a hopeless romantic.)

The effect, yes, back to the effect. Impossible Penetration lives up to its name and is worth the $50.00 Viking Manufacturing charges. The prop is so well made that even though I knew the secret, I couldn’t detect any possible method for the magic to occur. That sounds weird but it’s true.

I think it is important that the effect not be presented as a puzzle or a brain-teaser.

This is far beyond your Father’s Finger Chopper. (Ironically, this was the first Neil Simon Comedy I starred in. Your Father’s Finger Chopper ran for about 40 weeks at the old Pantages Theater in Chicago back in the late 1960’s. Finger Choppers were big back then and everyone was talking about them. Neil Simon wrote, I thought, one of the best scripts in theater history and the play did fantastically well until the Finger Chopper Fad dropped off and people turned their attention to the newer fads like “Man on the Moon” or “Watergate.”)

Go to the Viking Manufacturing website and check out this incredible effect. If you are looking to buy a new one for slightly less, you can check out my offering on eBay. In keeping with my new promise to be honest more often than not, I have decided to only review effects that I actually buy. So you’ll receive the straight scoop because I had to put out the cash and I want to make sure it lives up to the hype. In some cases, like this one, I’ll put up the effect for sale on eBay or soon in the new Inside Magic Galleria.

Inside Magic Rating: Five out of Five!

Buy the my Impossible Penetration at $42.00 post paid.