I expect that there will be many Revisits in 2026 as I’ve declared this to be a “no-buy” year and that the majority of new releases are crap that’s pushed into production to try to satisfy the demand of a market jonesing for the endorphins of clicking “buy now.”
January has been focused on revisiting the Paul Harris True Astonishment set. I have one of the original sets that came in locking wooden box with a burlap bag of props and gaffs needed to perform some of the magic. I also have the digital downloads that Murphy’s released that I acquired by jumping through their hoops which I will explain.
With the original release and I imagine the digital version, quite a few of the props were consumables: playing cards, coffee shop cards, and thread for example. With the exception of the Twilight Angel cards, I don’t believe refills were released. If they were, they weren’t widely available. This isn’t a problem just for this set but a lot of magic releases. Maybe the buyers have moved on to the next shiny thing or sales weren’t as good as the creators wanted but there’s a lot of problems in the magic market with the availability of refills.
The digital downloads overcame the problem with the DVDS by being reformatted into one stream. You see the DVDS had chapters – not for the individual trick but for each segment within the trick. The performance would play and the disk would stop, you click on the explanation which would play and the disk would stop, and then you click on the Harris commentary which would play and stop. Additionally there are Easter Eggs throughout the disks. These would pop up randomly and you’d have to click on the little wizard icon quickly to access them. If you missed it, perhaps you would catch it in a subsequent viewing. When you finished watching the Easter Egg, you had to figure out how to get back to where you were. As Paul says “Yeesh what a mess!”
There is some great magic in this set. The complete list can be found here. Some of my favorites are: Pack of Lies, Lubor’s Lens, Transcendental Bar Bet, and Tensegrity. Some of the magic are releases from Paul’s books that are reworked and simplified – for better or worse. The New Las Vegas Leaper is one that ruins the original for me as the kicker just doesn’t make sense.
The major difference between the sets is disk nine. In the boxed set, you received the TA Pen which was a separate release at one time. In the digital version, you got Wishbone – also a separate release. The pen was costly to produce so replacing it with the cheaper coffee stir trick makes good business sense.
When Murphy’s rereleased the set digitally, they buried the announcement in a YouTube video that if you owned the original, you could get the digital for free. First you had to email them with proof of purchase. Luckily the original shipping documents were tucked away in my box. Sending them off, I waited for a response. A couple of weeks later, they replied that I needed to send them a picture of me holding my box set. I complied and sometime later I received the files. Honestly I don’t think they expected anyone to do that much work.
The True Astonishment set is a great collection of magic. If you find a set of the secondary market or if they decide to rerelease, it’s worth considering. I’m enjoying my time revisiting and relearning
