Matchbook Follies by Don Wayne

With a wave of your hand you cause the cover of a matchbook to magically open as though it were a curtain.

Inside is a single match representing your assistant. You gesture “hypnotically” at the match and it moves… swaying back and forth. With a snap of your fingers the match stops, then reclines to a horizontal position. With another wave of your hand the match then floats up, out of the match-book and in to midair! Away from you, your hand or any other support.
You then remove your finger ring which acts as a hoop and pass it over and around the floating match.

Upon command the match descends back to the matchbook then stands back up, as a finale it take a bow as the cover slowly closes to finish a most unusual performance.

Includes the special matchbook, gimmick for the animation and levitation, instructions, routine, finger rings, practice rig, matches, everything you need to start performing straight away!

There’s 2 elements to this effect, the matchbook sequence and the levitation sequence. The former is completely self-contained within the matchbook, the latter requires some “external help” (there’s a spool of very high quality “help” included) but the hook-up is easy and practical. It’s comparable with a floating banknote or floating paper-rose in terms of the work involved so whilst you might not want to use it “table-hopping” it can be performed out in the real world and repeated multiple times a night without any major reset.

The matchbook can easily be themed to look like any brand of matches you like – it’s actually made of plastic so will last! Like all Don Wayne products there’s a fantastic mechanism and gadgetry making the magic happens, but you still need to rehearse the effect properly so that you can give a performance as good as it deserves.