"Just the Backs Ma'am" by Reed McClintock
Suggested Retail USD$20.00
Available from your favorite dealer
In a Blink: 6 Out of 10

I really wanted to love Reed McClintock's packet trick, "Just the Backs Ma'am", but, while the trick is good, the effect of it all just falls short.

In short, the effect of "Just the Backs Ma'am" is as straightforward as you could ask for: five identical cards are held face down and turn face up, one at a time, and set aside, until you have one card left.

It's at this point the Hype Machine kicks into overdrive. The climax is never described in ther ads, but it is lauded on: "The reveal at the end will leave your audiences questioning their judgment of character". Okey-dokey. What they should have said is that the tabled cards are turned over revealing backs on both sides of the cards.

That's the description of it, and it comes nowhere close to being everything the ad copy wants it to be. In fact, right about here, is where I had it with "Just the Backs Ma'am". Not because the trick is bad -- it's actually pretty good, if failing to live up to its marketing -- but because the stench of bovine excrement surrounding it is just too damned overwhelming.

There's simply no way "Just the Backs Ma'am" can live up to it.

The truth of the matter is that "Just the Backs Ma'am" is pretty well put together, a nice routine that is fun to do, but it doesn't have the impact it's touted to have. The biggest problem, I think, is the same one that haunts similar effects, and that's dealing with that last card turning over. Once again, you're at a point where you have to resort to a lame gag instead of something magical. Other packet tricks can play this off for one reason or the other; "Just the Backs Ma'am" really can't because the gaffs are the climax and that only seems to weaken things across the board.

More than likely, though, that's my own biase. I'm not thrilled with packet tricks that reveal gaffs used in packet tricks. Sue me. But the times I did this received only a so-so response and that says more than my own personal feelings about such things.

"Just the Backs Ma'am" is good, but there are other packet tricks out there that do deliver more magic and mystery and whatever noun you're looking for than this one.

Before I get letters, which I will get, yes, I'm sure McClintock kills them by the thousands with this one. That's the advantage a creator has over the consumer: experience and a personal stake in the thing. Over on the consumer side, where I sit, "Just the Backs Ma'am" is an above-average packet trick but not as good as it should be.

It's a shame it didn't live up to its hype.

"Just the Backs Ma'am" by Reed McClintock
In a Blink: 6 Out of 10

Practicality: 10
It's a packet trick, which means "packs small" by definition. Reset is not a problem with this one. It uses gaffs, but they are part of the climax so there's no real detriment there. Since the cards are "special" to begin with (five cards, all the same), even keeping them in a wallet, separate from other cards, makes sense.

Workmanship: 10
The cards are printed on Bicycle stock. 'Nuff said.

Documentation: 10
McClintock does a simply wonderful job with the documentation. What you don't pick up from the well-illustrated booklet (and I can't imagine what that would be) you can from the enclosed DVD.

Effect: 3
Rather than the mind-blowing, truly magical experience touted by the instructions, you get more of a cute little effect that plays but definitely not as gloriously as the ad copy promises.

Presentation: 5
McClintock's presentation is a good one, but the routining falls flat at one serious point that really diminishes things.

Shane