Guest Review: FAB Magic’s New Gotcha! Comedy Paint CanInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

[We apologize in advance for this review.

Mark Panner is a familiar name to some of our readers for the horrible job he
did in reviewing the incredible Bob Sheets in the March 20,
2005 Edition of Inside Magic.

We continue to apologize to Mr. Sheets for that review and any embarrassment
it may have caused. You can read it here.

Mr. Panner submits articles to Inside Magic on almost a daily basis. For the
most part, we reject them but still try to encourage his work. He once again
left his listening post beside his vintage Bearcat CB/Police Band Scanner to
review FAB Magic’s newest effect, The Gotcha! Comedy Paint Can.

Mr. Panner asked to do a product review.

We received news from Rick Fisher of the impending release of this soon-to-be
classic and suggested Mr. Panner review it. We said we’d buy him one if he could
find a use for it in his act.

Our review is simple. If you are in front of an audience and you want to make
them laugh, this is the prop for you. It is well-made, simple to use (as you’ll
see in Mr. Panner’s review), and priced perfectly for the working performer. In
fact, as you’ll read at the end of Mr. Panner’s ramblings, you can get a special
price if you order during the initial run.

We love it and you will as well.

Five out of Five – Our Highest!

And now, here is Mark Panner of Mystic Hollow, Michigan to offer his review
of The Gotcha! Comedy Paint Can.

By the way, we began to edit the story but due to time constraints, we
decided to just run it as is. For readers of the Inside Magic Daily News –
you’ll find we tried to clean-up some of the misspellings and
grammar].

My Review of The Gotcha! Comedy Paint Can
by Mark Panner – Magician

Keeping with their doctrine of “Always Something
New Under the Sun at FAB Magic,” Rick and Cheryl Fisher have released a great
new item called The Gotcha! Comedy Paint Can.

Here’s the deal:

A gallon paint can is displayed along with a paint brush shown to be normal
on both sides. You open the top of the can, dip the brush into the paint, remove
the paint-covered brush and set it to the side.

Now you pick up the paint can and walk slowly, menacingly towards the
innocent attendees in the audience. Have you lost your mind?

Are you suddenly so devoid of compassion you must risk drenching them in the
rich, luxurious enamel you’ve just sampled?

Your sense of decorum seems to have left your person and you throw the paint
towards the now confused and anxious crowd.

Perhaps there is a scream or a desperate effort to move out of the
anticipated splash zone to heighten the moment. But there was never a reason to
be fearful. Where the brightly pigmented latex stream was expected, all that
issues is a beautiful and colorful 4″ wide fabric streamer!

That’s why they have the word GOTCHA! in the title.

You turn the can around and show it is…

[We apologize in advance for this review.

Mark Panner is a familiar name to some of our readers for the horrible job he
did in reviewing the incredible Bob Sheets in the March 20,
2005 Edition of Inside Magic.

We continue to apologize to Mr. Sheets for that review and any embarrassment
it may have caused. You can read it here.

Mr. Panner asked to do a product review.

We received news from Rick Fisher of the impending release of this soon-to-be
classic and suggested Mr. Panner review it. We said we’d buy him one if he could
find a use for it in his act.

We love it and you will as well.

Five out of Five – Our Highest!

And now, here is Mark Panner of Mystic Hollow, Michigan to offer his review
of The Gotcha! Comedy Paint Can.

My Review of The Gotcha! Comedy Paint Can
by Mark Panner – Magician

Keeping with their doctrine of “Always Something
New Under the Sun at FAB Magic,” Rick and Cheryl Fisher have released a great
new item called The Gotcha! Comedy Paint Can.

Here’s the deal:

Now you pick up the paint can and walk slowly, menacingly towards the
innocent attendees in the audience. Have you lost your mind?

Are you suddenly so devoid of compassion you must risk drenching them in the
rich, luxurious enamel you’ve just sampled?

Your sense of decorum seems to have left your person and you throw the paint
towards the now confused and anxious crowd.

That’s why they have the word GOTCHA! in the title.

You turn the can around and show it is emblazoned with the word GOTCHA!

The Review

Now when we first saw notice of this effect, we were filled with desire.

This is the kind of high-quality prop we have come to expect from FAB Magic
— Inside Magic has praised their workmanship exemplified in their Suitcase
Table, Parlor Table, Vanishing Banana, and their Zombie.

Tim loves their stuff and he’s right. It is good, good, good.

Here was the problem.

We do mentalism.

Most of the effects are those handed down or tossed from Li’l Tom Hardy, America’s Foremost Psychic Entertainer.

We thought of ways to use the Gotcha – Comedy Paint Can. We
loved the props: It comes complete with can, lid, cloth streamer, special brush,
complete instructions and routine.

These were the rejected routines:

Dead or Alive

In our Dead or Live Routine, there is a place where we identify an audience
member’s dead relative. We speculate he or she may have been fatally injured in
an occupational accident. We thought we could use The Gotcha Comedy Paint
Can to “demonstrate” how he or she must have felt as he or she realized
there was no escape from his or her impending demise.

On the back of the can, we could have the dead relative’s name.

Our family said ‘no.’ To them, it was “too disgusting and weird.”

You can pick your friends but not your family.

The Billet Tear

We do a Neat Billet Tear effect to showcase our sleight-of-hand prowess. We
don’t tell the audience we’re doing sleight-of-hand but we hold our hand in a
real awkward way so they think that’s how it works.

The routine starts in earnest when we say in a real spooky voice, “Write your
name in the very center — the DEAD center — of the piece of paper you’ve just
be handed.” We give them a little guidance with our same spooky voice, “Make
sure whatever number you choose is an odd two-digit number where both digits are
different and where the sum of the two digits is not more than 17. Also make
sure you write both numbers within the small circle in the middle of that
pre-folded piece of paper.”

This usually leaves the spectator frozen in fear – it’s like they’re in a
trance.

We’ve found the Neat Billet Tear to be a killer effect. In fact, we are very
rarely wrong when we announce we know what number they’ve chosen — but then
again we’ve been doing it for years.

Unlike some of the Billet tricks out there, we don’t burn the paper after
tearing it. We say, “Here, I’ll tear a piece out of the folded-up paper and you
keep the rest.”

The knowledgeable amongst our readership will know the secret by this point
in the routine.

But how could we use The Gotcha Comedy Paint Can? We could say, “Okay,
now you wrote a number down on that piece of paper. Wouldn’t it be something if
we could read your mind and then make the number get painted on this big drawing
pad we’re handing you now? It would, right? Okay. Right, hang-on. Now, hold the
paper and we’ll paint the number. Wait, no, watch this. We’ll just throw the
whole bucket of paint at the pad and like modern art, it will ‘represent’ the
number you chose.”

We loved the bit but some of the FISM judges thought we stole David Blaine’s
patter when we said, “Hey, wait, no, look here. Look. Watch this. No, seriously,
watch this. This is cool.”

The S?ance

We end our show with a mini-s?ance where we’re bound with our special (but
they look normal) s?ance handcuffs. We stopped telling the audience they were
“s?ance handcuffs” and now we just say, “some ordinary, normal handcuffs.”

Anyway, we get locked up with the handcuffs binding our hands between our
legs while we’re sitting on a three-legged stool. The witness sits on the stool
with us — this adds to the comic relief needed at this point of our otherwise
deadly serious four-hour presentation — and the curtain is raised.

When the curtain is lowered, we used to have the witness appear disheveled
either with his pant legs pulled up and his socks pulled down, or have his
toupee taken off and shoved in his mouth. If we have a female witness, she comes
out wearing our tuxedo shirt and we’re wearing her tee-shirt. The funny part is
that her undergarments are on the outside of our shirt.

It’s also funny if the witness was wearing one of those short tee-shirts that
are so popular now. Our big belly sticks out between the bottom of the shirt and
the top of our tuxedo pants.

By the way, we started using stooges for this after that well-publicized law
suit in Marion, Illinois.

Do you realize there was a time in this country when it would have been
unheard of for a sister to sue her brother just for embarrassing her on stage.
Times, friends, have changed. We don’t talk with Sis anymore — her loss.

So how do we get The Gotcha Comedy Paint Can into this classic of
magic?

We do the normal disheveling stuff but before the curtain is raised a fifth
time, we ask the spectator to waddle over to pick up the bucket of paint and
bring it in the curtain area with us.

They have to waddle because they are wearing clown shoes at this point in the
routine. We do different things to the victim each time — the whole routine
eats up 45-minutes and cost us almost nothing so it is a natural closer. In
fact, those who have stayed through our entire show say that of all the s?ance
routines they’ve witnessed, this is one of them.

Our insurance carrier ruled this use of The Gotcha Comedy Paint Can was too
risky — disheveled, poorly-shod spectators gagging on their own toupee could
fall.

So what could we do?

We had to have it. It is too good
a prop.

We were performing at a kids’ party last week and noticed many of the
children seemed distracted or even uninterested or scared by the mentalism
routine.

To be honest, kids under the age of 8-years don’t have the attention span
needed for a four-hour ESP/PK/S?ance routine. Television and those video games
have turned them into bird-brains. This is a known fact. You can read about it
on-line.

We got to thinking, “hey, why not do funny magic for the kids? We could
shorten the show a bit — like just three hours — take out all of the devil and
spirit worship stuff, leave out the s?ance part all together, and find a place
for The Gotcha Comedy Paint Can.”

Conclusion

You know what? It fits.

It really does.

It is a great bit, well-made, funny, and clever.

You need to pick your spot for it though. It will have a very limited appeal.

The only performers likely to benefit from it are emcees, kid show
entertainers, lounge acts, parlor magicians, stage magicians, or clowns. Beyond
these limited specialty acts, it really has no usefulness.

But the price is great and the quality is high. Think about your act and if
you think you might be able to make room for a classic, slap-stick bit, this may
be it.

You can buy it directly from the only company on earth with the right to
manufacture and sell it: FAB Magic.

The list price is $35.00 but if you mention Inside Magic, you can get it for
$29.99 plus shipping.