i'm looking for some tricks that don't cost a fortune that would be good for stage presentation for groups of young boys and their siblings. Anything with comedy (ala the "Mystery of the Vanishing bandana/banana") would be great.

Any ideas/input is welcome!

How about the Hippity Hop Rabbits?

Paper balls over head.

There's also a "Cub Scout Book of Magic".....The Magazine "Boys Life" used to have a Magic column, I think I still have a collection of the old columns in a couple notebooks from years ago. Might be kind of cool to do something they can learn as part of their "progression" through scouting.

All of the above suggestions, plus Professor's Nightmare.

That show better be a long ways off if your buying the tricks now. The rule before adding anything to the show is 1 hour of practice for every minute the trick takes (include timer for patter) then 1 hour of rehearsal for every minute. Yes there is a difference. Then if your trial audience approves you put it in the act.

HaHa! That is actually good advice for the average trick. I may adopt it myself. I'm chuckling because of some of the card effects I have been working on over the last few months. Try 10 hours of practice for every 1 minute of performance! As long as you are selecting easy effects I think that is a good rule of thumb. So if you want to do a twenty minute show of fairly easy effects then you should be ready in a month or two of moderate preparation and you might succeed in two weeks if you really dedicate yourself for those two weeks. The problem is if you accidentally select a difficult trick it could derail your whole time table. If you are new I would stick to mostly gimmicked effects. Sleight of hand is a lifetime dedication.

Look up candy factory. Always a nice encore trick for kids.

Great advice Paddy. Rest assured, i'm not a Cubmaster who is trying to get into magic, i'm a magic enthusiast who's become a cubmaster. i have enough tricks that i've i know how to perform already to last me through the next few meetings. i'm trying to find some new tricks to keep the magic thing going through the next year.

i did a few tricks at my recruitment talks, and the boys ate them up ... so i figured my schtick would be magic and i'd perform a quick trick on stage each Pack meeting.

Thanks for all the advice, guys!

Try rope magic and tie the patter into the various knots that you learn in the scouts. I think that the fiber optics routine would be a good place to start but be sure to add a but here and there to tie it in to what they know.

Just for a laugh you could do the needle through arm for a first aid example.


As always,
Dylan

Listen to him!

gooup, that's good to hear. Glad to see that your are introducing the cubs scouts to learning thru magic, that will keep their interest and lead them to becoming Eagle scouts some day. Good luck.

Paddy