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This was recently requested so I thought I'd share my thoughts on it

Price: about £15
Difficulty:2 upwards

Contents: 1 dvd and 4 x 2" red sponge balls

The dvd starts logically on palms and concelments then moves through to vanishes, appearences and loads. The final section is on full routines.

The dvd is well filmed IMHO. The background is pure white so there are no distractions. Most moves are filmed from at least 2 different angles. One downside though is that sometimes important details happen out of shot. Often when he does a false transfer, he drops his arm down by his side out of shot. This means you dont see how he changes his hand position or body language.

There is a lot of performance footage (with some extra included on the bonus section of the disc). This gives you an idea of how different effects play for different people, although Jay has a habit of sticking his face right in the camera in the middle of the spectators reaction shots lol. I guess thats ego for ya

I was looking forward to the Gary Darwin section on the dvd, but I was a bit dissapointed.Several of his lovely vanishes arent really explained or demonstrated well enough (I don't think so anyway). He has some alternative presentations which are interesting but may require you to purchase a few more items.

Overall, I'd say this set is ok-ish, but could definatly have included more moves and routines. For a beginer its Ok, but you'll soon have worked your way through it. Price wise i think its OK. Its not cheap for the few moves thats on it, but (a) you'll have a few nice routines by the end (b) you do get sponge balls with it, which would cost you about a fiver anyway

I'd give it 6/10

It sounds like the SPongeball Toolbox is the way to go then.

Thanks for the review. I had wondered which was the better of the two.

Thank you, this is what I've looked for

I can throughly recommend the SpongeBall Toolbox. The teaching is very clear on the DVD, close-up shots, proper explanation. I don't have any Noblezada DVD's but in the trailers he comes across as cocky which puts me off anything of his.

Hi lozey,
Very good points on Noblezada. dvd ok on my end as you've said.
Check out Steve Dacri too. o and please let's take nothing away from the b-loved Al Goshman. For our beginner friends make yr own. Sounds
low but try-it. Wlk b4 you run.

Something puts me off Noblezada's DVD's. I am tempted with the World's Greatest Magic ones as you get a variety of styles on them. I have the Chop Cup DVD which is superb and also has the suave Steve Dacri on it whose teaching and routine is as good here as it is on the Spongeball Toolbox.

Considering the price and what you receive, the toolbox is the ideal starting place for the beginner as you won't really need any extra props to perform the effects on the DVD, other than a Sanada gimmick.

If I might add to the review ( is that okay? I mean I can add it here instead of starting a 4th thread about the DVD, right ? ) I picked this up in the hope of expanding my sponge ball 'arsenal' so to speak. That's what the kids all the moves they know.

This guy Jay is very 'street' which I'm not such a fan of, but the teaching is good. Nothing new but then if you wanted to hear that you'd read the review above. As I said, I wanted to add something.

Jay seems to spend an obscene amount of time attempting to convince the viewer that sponge is cool. Cool is a very much in the eye of the beholder, but as someone who actually genuinely wanted to improve my sponge handling, it felt odd that he was almost constantly trying to convince me that I should perform with sponge at all.

Also, I bought this because I have a tonne of sponge balls and wanted to put them to better use, and specifically didn't get Dacris toolbox because I didn't want even more bits of sponge.

Imagine my joy then when what I thought was just a DVD came with 4 sponge balls.

In short this DVD is for people who have never touched a sponge ball and who, in all honesty, aren't sure if they want to. That's the market for this.

Oh except the bit at the end with Darwin. He teaches a very nice gimmickless multiplying sponge ball routine.

-Stacy

I wanted to add a little more, because I'm like that.

I originally I was instructed in sponge balls by Paul Brown on the Davenport's magic for beginners course and he taught a little practice routine called the 10 count, which is a 10 move sequence with which to get the timing right on vanishes and productions. The idea behind this was to count each move with the same delay to improve the flow of our performance.

The thing is, he said it was something you shouldn't really perform for people because of the fact that it doesn't make a very engaging routine, counting to 10 whilst doing seemingly unrelated actions. Jay on the other hand does it as part of his stand up routine, presenting it as a sort of sucker 'teaching' effect.

Personally I agree that it's something you shouldn't really perform for an audience.

-Stacy

The4thCircle wrote:I wanted to add a little more, because I'm like that.

I originally I was instructed in sponge balls by Paul Brown on the Davenport's magic for beginners course and he taught a little practice routine called the 10 count, which is a 10 move sequence with which to get the timing right on vanishes and productions. The idea behind this was to count each move with the same delay to improve the flow of our performance.

The thing is, he said it was something you shouldn't really perform for people because of the fact that it doesn't make a very engaging routine, counting to 10 whilst doing seemingly unrelated actions. Jay on the other hand does it as part of his stand up routine, presenting it as a sort of sucker 'teaching' effect.

Personally I agree that it's something you shouldn't really perform for an audience.

-Stacy

My experience is that it works well for an audience (I learnt it from Steve Dacri's sponge toolbox), especially after a two in the hand routine.

Has anyone... [MOD EDIT: Please note that it is against forum rules to request or offer DVDs or Books for sale or trade - thank you for your understanding]