Marshall Brodien - "It's Easy Once You Know the Secret"

While Marshall Brodien has worked as a magician since he was a teenager, most people probably know him because of his TV Magic line of products. Through his TV Magic Cards and Sets he has introduced more magicians to magic, myself included, than anyone else in history.

Marshall and I met when I contacted him about a TV Magic set I had bought for my collection that I wasn’t sure was complete. Here he is at the SAM convention in Dallas examining that set, which is the second magic set that he produced, released in 1972. It was missing part of one of the tricks.

About a week after the convention was over, I received a surprise package from Marshall. It was a brand new, never opened copy of the set we had examined.

This was the start of a friendship that has lasted years and is why I am honored to the the custodian of Marshall's personal museum.

I hope you enjoy some of my favorite pieces related to Marshall's career as the #1 magic marketer the world has ever known.

Among magicians, Marshall is best known for his TV Magic Cards. When Marshall got the idea of selling the cards on TV, he told his friend Rick Carey, who offered to be his partner. They each invested $2,500, and Marshall recorded a commercial and bought air time on WGN Television. TV Magic Cards were first released in November, 1969.

The cards shown on the right are the ones that were shipped to customers as a result of the TV Magic Cards commercial. They were stock Fox Lake decks provided by Haines House of Cards with the TV Magic Card instructions wrapped around the deck. It wasn't until almost a year later that the more familiar TV Magic Card packaging shown on the left was introduced. They were also sold on consignment in stores around Chicago and were displayed in the countertop display shown.

A little known fact is that magician Johnny Thompson wrote the instructions that came with the TV Magic Cards. It is estimated that over the last 30+ years, more than ten million decks of TV Magic Cards have been sold.

The success of TV Magic Cards spurred this copycat deck, "Aladdin's Magic Cards".  While the concept behind TV Magic Cards has been around since 1909, Marshall sued, stating that the packaging and marketing were a direct attempt to capitalize on the popularity of TV Magic Cards. He won, and the court ordered both damages be paid and that Aladdin's Magic Cards be pulled from store shelves. I recently learned that many of the decks of recalled cards were then sold and distributed in the UK.

In 1972, following on the continued success of TV Magic Cards and a few other individual tricks, Marshall released his first magic set, TV Magic Show. It featured 12 tricks and sold for $9.95. With a 90-second commercial featuring Marshall airing nation-wide, they were soon selling hundreds of thousands of the sets.

I've been interested in magic ever since I was a kid. I "purchased" my first magic set in 1976 from the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon on WGN TV. I can still remember calling in to make my pledge and receiving the magic set and a Quaker Oats cookie jar in return. I still have the set, but unfortunately, the cookie jar was broken over the years. Marshall has produced over 250 individual products over the last 30 years.  I have all but three in my collection.  Please see the Wanted section to see if you can help me complete this part of the collection.

Since Siegfried and Roy were larger than life, it made sense that "The Siegfried and Roy Spectacular Magic Set" was the largest set at that time with 60 tricks. Besides being available at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas where Siegfried and Roy were performing, Marshall's company also got 50,000 of the sets placed in Walgreens, Thrifty Drugs, and Toys 'R' Us stores. The 12-trick "Siegfried and Roy Pocket Magic" kit and the "Siegfried and Roy Magic Card Box & Deck" set were also produced, and hundreds of thousands of sets were placed in retailers nation-wide. It is amazing that with so many of these sets produced, many of them are fairly rare and hard to find.

As a young man, Lance Burton had been given a deck of TV Magic Cards as a gift from his mother. It was only natural that when Marshall approached Lance to discuss him having his own set, Lance said yes. The set shown was produced in 1992 and was the first of 16 sets Marshall produced for Lance. Besides being available at the Hacienda and then the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas, Lance's sets were also marketed on the Home Shopping Network and in Costco. An interesting fact is that Marshall also produced Lance Burton's first magic special.

One of my favorite television shows when I was growing up was The Magician, which starred Bill Bixby as magician Tony Blake. In 1974 Marshall produced The Magician magic set and The Magician branded TV Magic Cards.

Shown on the right is a screen-used prop from the show, The Magician card shown in the opening credits. The studio card was a special card given out to promote the show. I also have a second card (not shown) that was used in the later episodes when a special card was needed for Tony Blake to throw as a weapon. Both cards were hand painted by the Paramount art department, with the weapon card being painted on a piece of metal so that when thrown it would stick into walls, etc.

In recent years these cards have been reproduced printed on plastic cards. You can spot the reproductions since they are not hand painted.

This is a prototype magic set that Marshall designed for David Copperfield. Unfortunately, the set was never produced and in fact, David Copperfield has never had a marketed magic set.

Click on the image of the letters to view a pdf copy
Special Thanks to Cynthia Loushin for donating the letters

Due to differences Marshall and his partner, Rick Carey, had on the direction of TV Magic Ltd., Marshall sold his half of the company to Carey in November, 1974.  As part of the deal, Marshall remained on the payroll as a consultant.

In 1978 TV Magic Ltd. entered into an agreement with Columbia House to produce a subscription-based Columbia House of Magic's "Magicians Secret File".  Each month a 24-card set of magic tricks would be mailed out at the cost of $1.89 + shipping.  As a consultant to TV Magic Ltd., Marshall teamed with writer Clarence Sutton to create the 938 instruction cards that would comprise the complete set.

Shortly after this, Marshall's former partner was approached by Columbia House about doing a subscription-based magic lesson set. Marshall was contracted to create the set. Unfortunately, Carey ended up filing for bankruptcy, and Columbia House pulled out after only 3-4 months of subscriptions were sent out. While you will still occasionally find one of these partial sets, shown above is one of the few complete never-released sets.