Kreskin ESP Magic Set

[Bill Mullins]

I've been researching the psychological force of a drawing of a circle inside a triangle. It's often associated with Uri Geller (Randi's 1975 book on Geller has him using it as early as 1972). The earliest I see it in print is in Martin Gardner's Aug 1973 Scientific American column. Kreskin is reported as using it in 1974. But the predecessor to all of this is Robert Nelson, who described essentially the same force but with a rectangle and a circle in his 1957 manuscript, Miracles of the Mind (which also shows up in a routine by Larry Becker in Genii, May 1958).

The Kreskin report is intriguing. I wonder, did he lift it from Geller, read it in Gardner, or had he been using it previously. It's hard to find detailed reports of his shows.

He had a ESP/magic set produced by Milton Bradley on sale as early as 1967. Can anyone here who has this set look and see if it includes this force in it?

[Bob Farmer]

I have one that`s never been used though the outside of the box shows some wear. All of the "tests" use either the custom ESP cards or a pendulum. On a quick look through the booklet I didn't see anything about drawing shapes within shapes.

It's this one:

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1268015 ... A0QAvD_BwE

[Bill Mullins]

Thanks, Bob. I know of at least one more box design, but wouldn't be surprised if it had the same contents.

[Diego]

The different pendulum kits that Kreskin and Geller sold were not intended to be "magic sets" that contained magic/mentalism effects to perform for others, but these were sold (by the millions) to the general public to test/discover their own ESP/Intuition/Perception potential.

So the effect you described would not be overtly seen in any of these products that Kreskin and Geller sold.
Dunninger earlier had a board game type set, (sans pendulum) that was sold to the general public as well.

[Bill Mullins]

Thanks, Diego. I've never seen the insides of one of these sets, and assumed that they had some simple mental magic effects within them.