Choosing a Magic Set for Kids (Most of Them Get Abandoned)

The classic gift is a boxed magic set with forty tricks in it. It is almost always the wrong thing to buy, and the reason is worth understanding before you buy anything else.

Why the big boxed set fails

Forty tricks means forty sets of instructions, thirty-eight of which the child will never read. What happens in practice is that they open the box, try four things badly on the same afternoon, get a lukewarm reaction from whoever is in the room, and the box goes under the bed.

The failure is not the child's attention span. It is that nothing in the box was ever performed — and the whole reward of magic is somebody else's face, not the prop.

What works instead

One trick, learned properly. A child who can do a single effect well will show it to everyone they meet for a fortnight. That is the loop you want: do it, get a reaction, want to do it again.

It has to work the first time. An adult will persevere through a week of failure because they chose this hobby. A child will not, and should not be expected to. The first trick must work on the day the wrapping comes off, which means the prop should do the work rather than the hands.

It has to survive being handled. Children hand things to other children. Anything that breaks when a spectator grabs it will break.

The ones that hold up

The ball and vase has been in beginners' sets for over a century for a reason: nothing to learn mechanically, and the whole thing is presentation, which is the actual skill. Sponge balls are the other classic that genuinely deserves the label — the effect happens in the spectator's own closed hand, which is why children remember it.

A Svengali deck is remarkable value for a child, with one caveat: it does several tricks and the temptation is to do all of them to the same person, at which point an older sibling works out that the deck is the common factor. One revelation, once, then put it away.

A note on ages and small parts

Several of these include parts small enough to be a choking hazard. Our product pages say so where it applies, and the figure that matters is the ball diameter, not the age printed on a supplier's box. Suppliers are optimistic about ages in a way that should not be relied on.

If it is for a party rather than a person

Party packs are a different purchase and a much better one for a classroom or a party bag: one simple trick, fifty of them, nobody expected to become a magician. That removes the pressure that kills the boxed set.

Order early

These ship from our supplier overseas and we quote no delivery dates, because any number we gave you would be invented. If it is for a birthday, order sooner than feels necessary.