Tarantula – Yigal Mesika

Extending on the work of Steve Fearson and John Kennedy comes Yigal Mesika’s Tarantula. It’s a tiny motorized reel that allows you to perform some great magic.

The poster item used in the Tarantula advertising is the Hovering. You borrow a friend’s ring and hold it very fairly, then give it a gentle horizontal spin and slowly move your hands away – the ring is now floating. As it continues to spin, the ring hovers up and down above your hand, from one hand to another, and slowly lands on your own finger! It looks great.

There are some other uses described on the Tarantula DVD that comes with the gimmick, but none of them are as good as this. It really does look amazing.

The one great thing with the Tarantula is that it can be instantly set up in the middle of your show. The popular Fearson hook-up, for example, doesn’t give you that facility. The Hovering effect does have one downside though; it can’t be immediately repeated. You need to do a little bit of prep work, so it’s only really suitable for one-off performances, unless you excuse yourself to the bathroom for 30 seconds after every performance. That’s a shame, because if it was instantly resetable, I’d use it at every table at every gig.

One other bit of Vanishing Inc. honesty: all other dealers are advertising that the ring can be floated back onto its owner’s finger. It’s true; it can. But Mesika doesn’t give you any suggestions at all from removing that special adhesive from their ring. If you can work that out (and who knows, you probably could), it would be a miracle!

All in all, this is an good product and a surprisingly good price. But, it doesn’t come without it’s problems that will take a little work to overcome. Once you’ve sorted that, if you perform it once or twice per gig, this will get you rebooked!