Cube In Bottle Project by David Stryker and Taylor Hughes

Hello. Welcome to spontaneous, oh, my head's a bit out, isn't it? I'll have to go down the ear like this. Welcome to, or maybe I can do that, maybe welcome to this spontaneous and flawlessly opening of Real Magic Review. I'm doing lots of live ones because it's nearly Christmas and I haven't got lots of time for editing, but they're fine, they're fun because we can look at the trailers and stuff. So before we do it, thank you, I think there's like four people here, which I wasn't expecting because I didn't put this anywhere except for Facebook about two minutes ago. So good to have you here. Do a comment if you want. Make me feel less alone on the lead up to Christmas. I'm not, I'm not doing this sympathy thing. I'm not completely alone, of course, but it's nice of you to comment because it makes me feel less alone in this room. So before I do this, please like and subscribe. Whenever you're watching this, most people will not be watching this live. Check out carmagiccourse.com. Loads of new uploads on there. Loads of live sessions. Danny Goldsmith recently. Great, right bargain what you get for your money. So carmagiccourse.com and keep an eye out for developments in that. Right, that was me spinning a pen and dropping it, sorry. I'm gonna talk about this, this cube. I've spent, just spent quite a bit of time with this, this cube and bottle project. There's lots of cubes going into bottles at the moment, isn't there? Henry Harrius has got his, which I performed in my one-man show, Cube and Bottle, that's what that's called. And they've teamed up with Henry Harrius on this. I'll give you a little unboxing in a minute, if you like, which isn't a real one, because I've unboxed it and played with it and all that, but it's quite a nice little set. So Henry, the difference is, right, Henry Harrius' one is you show an empty jar, bottle, so to speak, bottle of the title. You show the Rubik's Cube, you've done whatever you want with it. And what I do in my show, I did a couple of routines with it, Venom Cube, all that kind of stuff. You put the empty jar in a bag. You put the cube in a bag. You do that, and then you take the jar out and the cube is in the jar, give it away for a giveaway. Bosh, that's what you do. And it's a cork out. Performed it live in a show three times now, and a few different times. It's just great. So this isn't that. What this is, is David Stryker had a mystery cube. Don't want to keep saying mystery sold, but that was David Penn thing, wouldn't it? Which I quite liked, actually, the clear box. A nice idea. So David Stryker did the thing of showing you how to put a cube in a bottle. And came up with this way of doing it. And then Vanishing Excelled that with the cube and the bottle and all the things you need to make that. What this is, is that. And that was a kind of mystery item, wasn't it? It was a kind of cool thing to have that you could do as a giveaway, and people started doing routines of it, as did Taylor Hughes. So Taylor Hughes has worked with him to create a routine for this called Reflection, which is basically what you get here. We'll have a look at the trailer, and I'll stop the trailer and comment on it, because we'll kind of get most of the review done in that. I hope it works. So here we go. And then we'll unbox it, and I'll show you about what you get. Five years ago, I created Mystery Cubed, a Rubik's Cube impossibly trapped inside of a glass bottle. I wanted to create something people could hold, examine, look at, and keep forever. On this project, we're gonna teach you three incredible secrets about the cube and bottle. First, the biggest secret of all, we're gonna teach you how to put a cube inside a bottle. And trust me, it might look- Right, so this is the first thing, and this is what I've done. So I've built the cube, which I shall show you in a minute. I've put the cube in the bottle, and that is kind of the main, no, not the main thing, because the routine is as well, but that's what you're gonna spend most of your time doing. I'll just play a bit more of this bit in case I miss something. Impossible, but it's much easier than you think. In just 20 minutes, we're gonna show you how to go from this to this. They don't show you how to do that, or did they? I've got a pretty good idea how they do, but they don't, unless I miss something. I'm sure I've watched every single minute of it, unless there's an extra thing. Oh, no, it says that, not actual footage in the bottom, yeah. Which is fine, but just saying no. And it's 20 minutes, right? So the 20-minute part of the download, which goes on for however long, an hour and something. It's great, by the way, it's very clear, all that kind of stuff. And the 20 minutes from take two, it took me more than 20 minutes, and that's fine. And I almost wanted it to take longer, because I actually really enjoyed that process. I didn't think I was gonna. I'm not sure it's something I wanna do a lot, but I enjoyed learning how to do it, and it was a real flow activity. It was challenging enough, and I enjoyed it. What I will say about that, is that even though it is taught very well, there was one moment in it that something happened that wasn't talked about that might happen, and it kind of fell apart a little bit, and it took me a good bit of messing around to get it. Again, as long as you can sort that sort of stuff out, it's okay, but it was a little bit frustrating. So, but it'll take you for a bit of it. He says it, see, it is kind of easy, but the first time you do it will be fiddly if you wanna do it a lot, and some people do get really into doing it. It's a good thing to be able to do. And obviously, if you can do it yourself, it's safe to bind things in and stuff like that. That jar is great, by the way. Now, the Henry Harrison jar is great, because you've got the whole trick is amazing. This is a slightly different one because it's got a smaller neck, so it looks slightly more impossible, which it doesn't matter when you're doing the cube going into the jar, because it's a giveaway, and they can see it can't come out, but I think on stage, if you're not gonna do that as a giveaway, that narrow neck is really good. Something else I was gonna say about that, I've just forgotten. Yes, I've forgotten. So I'll carry on. In your package, you'll get everything you need, and we've teamed up with Henry Harris to give you the best cube on the market. Right, so they've teamed up with Henry Harris, Harry Harry, that's Harry James Harriot, to give you the best cube on the market. I disagree. I love Henry Harris, I love his stuff, but it's not the best cube on the market. It might be in a magic market, but the only issue I've got with that cube is that when you get a speed cube, it does what they call cut corners, right? So if you get the turn slightly early, it'll still do the turn. So when you're doing a lot of one-handed stuff, it's quite handy to have that. If you're a little bit nervous, if you know you don't kind of turn it, there's a fraction you need to do it, it will still turn the other slice, and it will cut corners. This, I have found, caught up a few times, and it was a shame. I'm happy to use it, it's great, but just a caveat, it's not the best cube on the market. But on the magic market, maybe. Hardy regular cube. And of course, I don't mind, because it fits with so many of the other stuff, Venom Cube, the 360, all that. So it's fine, but just if you wanna do that sort of more difficult, challenging, almost sleight-of-hand with cubes, you might come across, just, you're gonna have to work a little bit hard to get it smooth, harder. Second, I'm gonna teach you the routine that I have used to close nearly every one of my shows, including virtual shows, for the last four years. Good, good point. It does, it's great for virtual shows, cube matching. I did Venom Cube a lot, because you can have the thing in the frame, you know, we might be looking at doing virtual shows again. I know some of us kind of went, oh, well, I'm not gonna be doing them, so I'm not looking into this. It is a sort of trick that you can do quite well in that. Rubik's Cube stuff goes really well in virtual shows. Tony Hughes' routine, Reflection, is great. It's a really solid routine. It's beginning, middle, and end. It's got phases to it. He's got scripting ideas. He's had some ideas by Mark James. Mark James has taken this and also has a performance on this, download of his performance. Sounds not that good, but it kind of gives you what you need to know. It's just a different take on it. It's different scripting ideas. He's developed it a little bit and done the little tweaks. It's a good routine, so that's the main routine that you get, that and the Mystery Cubed. And I will say something about the routine. There's a bit in the middle of it which you have a couple of choices on. The one that he does in that show requires a second gimmick that you're gonna have to pay not a small amount for. It doesn't matter, I don't think. I actually think the gimmickless switch idea that he gives you, isn't what, I think it's actually better. I think it's more, there's less you have to worry about. It's more kind of not organic, you know what I mean? But you just don't have that other thing that you have to worry about. And I think that the thing he does in the middle is without that gimmick, is just as good, but you're just gonna have to think about it and think about your scripting and all that. Involved in magic was wonder. You show the audience a cube that's been trapped inside a glass bottle. Even if you wanted to, there's nothing you could do to change the configuration of that cube. But under impossible circumstances, an audience member is able to mix a different cube so that it perfectly matches the cube and bottle. When Taylor tells you he's gonna give you his full routine, he means it. He's gonna go over the method, but not only that, he's gonna give you his script so that you can add it to your show right away. And there is some, as we always say with this, you don't wanna take that script word for word, but good scripting means there are things said at certain times for a reason. So there are a few things he says at the beginning that kind of make the end bit stronger. It kind of puts that seed into people's minds of what have, so you're doing a callback to the bottle, basically. You introduced a bottle at the beginning, then you kind of, as a kind of curious thing, hand it out, and then you kind of forget about it, and the callback is to that. But there are a few things you can say that make that stronger. So the scripting actually is really worth looking at if you wanna do this routine. That's right, and there's more. The third mystery we're gonna teach you is how to solve a mixed cube while it's impossibly trapped inside a bottle. This takes an impossible effect and makes it even more impossible. And the best part of all, it's easy to do, and you can start doing it right away. This project has something for everyone. If you're an arts and crafts or a builder, you like working with your hands, you're gonna love just putting the cube inside the bottle. If you're a magician, you're gonna love it even more. Yeah, you get the idea. So, so that end bit, well, that's the bit that really got me, I was like, I had an idea, of course, but I wanted the teaching of that end bit. That's like three minutes, the teaching of that. It's really easy, and it is brilliant. But what I would do is watch the whole download first. Don't try and go along with it as you're building it. And I watched it all, and then I went back. And now, if you wanna do that final thing, you're gonna have to do the main part of it differently. The building of the cube is gonna have to be done a little bit differently, no harder or anything like that, but you're gonna have to know what you're doing. So decide whether you wanna do the cube match, whether you wanna do the, or get an extra bottle and do both, or the solving cube. I do love the solving cube. It's very easy. It's really cool. It's a little bit, you're gonna have to practice it. But it's a different, you can't hand it out and stuff like that. So I do prefer the, I love matching cube effects because they play strongly. And it's very interesting. Someone said the other day on one of the forums or Facebook that, don't we all understand Rubik's Cube? No, everybody hates Rubik's Cube magic. It's terrible, it's rubbish. And I thought, that's done by someone who either performs it badly or doesn't perform it because you can't argue with the response of the audience. And now if people say, oh, well maybe you just think they're being polite. No, you know when something storms, you know when people come up to you at the end and say, oh, the Rubik's Cube bit was amazing. So I don't think everybody should be into Rubik's Cube magic and do it, but you can't say it doesn't get good reactions and it isn't good magic. It's something that people recognize. It's some people that have memories for, a thing that has memories for people. It's, even if they haven't, kids know what it is. It's when my son's friends come around and I show them something with the cube, they just think it's really cool. So yes, there is a geeky side to it, but it always goes down really well. And I think it is a really good alternative to card and coin tricks, which of course I also love. So we'll do a little bit of an unboxing now. I'll just show you what we get. I'll try not to expose the codes and stuff like that. Sorry about that. Whoops. Hang on, let's do this. We'll do that, just to make it a little bit prettier. There you go. So you get a nice big doings here. And for those packaging junkies, I know people think it's ridiculous, it's really nicely designed. It's got a bit of a close-up on it there. Oh, let me just check. Okay, so this is what you get. You get three Henry Harriers cubes because you're gonna need that to make it and do the routine. So, and you have absolutely, it doesn't come like this. One of these is in there and you've got to put that in there. That's my cube. And it's interesting. There is a way of getting it a little bit straighter than that, but I can't, that's as good as I can get it. It's a little bit wonky. It's not wonky, I think. It's just looks like it's been slightly turned, but I'm happy with that. You show that to someone, you're gonna match it. It's great. And that's my little piece of work. But you get every single thing you need. So you get a rag because you used that. You get all the tools. You get this, even a stick that you're gonna use a lot, by the way. A bit of blue tack, all this kind of stuff. So I would say it didn't give me quite enough of the sticky tack. They were a bit tight with that. They could have been a bit more generous. So with this box and getting literally nothing else other than maybe a tiny bit more tack, you're gonna be able to build it. So I like that. I like the fact that you don't have to go and go. I've got a certain type of screwdriver and things like that. It's good. And that's what you get. And it's a good product now. I don't usually talk about price points, but I'm gonna at this point. It's not an inexpensive piece of kit. It's, what is it, 87 pound or something? Is that a hundred bucks? I don't know about that. Probably why it's 87 pounds, to be honest. I think it's a bit on the steep side, only because, well, because Mystery Cubed is like 47 quid in it. And that's because it's teaching you how to do it. It's giving you the thing. But if you really like the routine and you really wanna learn how to build a cubing bottle, and it's an investment that's worth it, because you're gonna be able to use, it's giving you the tools to use it again and again and start creating your own stuff. And you get everything in it. And I can see why it's expensive. It's probably not a very, you know, free cubes, the bottle, the tools, the thing, the packaging. It's all, it's quite a decent thing. But it is on the steep side. So, you know, if you're thinking, oh, I just wanna play with it and put it down. If you're not gonna build bottles and you're gonna play with it once and never perform it, have a think about it. But I, it's something to consider, but I think it's a really good product. It kind of got bought out a while ago and I haven't seen much about it or heard much about it, but it's saying that I haven't really been on the forums about it much. But I think it's worthy of your consideration. And I think it's good, it's good to ask questions about. So anything you've, questions you've got about it or comments, I always miss stuff out of these reviews. I will answer the questions on the comments on comment session. There is not one this Thursday coming up. If you're watching this in real time or you're watching this on the day, because it's coming up with Christmas, I've got gigs, I've got stuff going on. And this Thursday, I'm gonna put loads of these live sessions in this spontaneous one. So hit the notification button, the little bell icon, like and subscribe, and you'll get the notifications of when I go live, which is gonna be quite a lot, I think. So thanks very much. Have a great one. Thanks for watching you guys that have watched and have a great Christmas if you don't watch another live until then.