LOS ANGELES, California, USA, May 13, 2026 — David Regal’s Color Changing Knives — a set that Craig Petty has called “the best knives I’ve ever seen” — is back and expanded. The newly released magic product is receiving rave reviews. Nick Lewin gives the set five stars declaring the knives are “As good as it gets.”
Regal is an acclaimed magic creator and performer whose career runs equally deep in television. He is a two-time Lecturer of the Year at the Academy of Magical Arts and recipient of its Creative Fellowship for lifetime contributions to inventing magic methods, and his books — among them Approaching Magic, Interpreting Magic, and the two-volume Constant Fooling — are considered essential texts in serious magic libraries. His Hollywood résumé includes head writer credits on Rugrats and staff writing on Everybody Loves Raymond and Dharma & Greg. The two careers meet most visibly in his six years as head writer and co-executive producer of truTV’s The Carbonaro Effect.
Regal’s original Color Changing Knives sold out and became coveted by performers. The new Deluxe edition returns the knives to the market and upgrades the original four-knife set to six, with two additional knives developed in direct response to requests Regal received from working magicians over the years the set was off the market.
“From the start, these were not stock knives in any way, shape, or form,” Regal told Conjurly. “These were designed from the ground up to get the right shape, size, weight, and design characteristics to magnify the impact of any color-changing knife routine.” The black stag and mother-of-pearl finish allows a performer to identify the knives by touch alone while they’re still pocketed. A single bolster rather than two — what Regal calls increasing the “magic real estate” where the effects take place — keeps audience attention where it belongs. A four-corner geometry facilitates the most critical moves in knife magic. The blades are dulled but polished to look sharp, making them safe for audience examination.
At the routine’s climax, a knife with a black stag texture, three rivets, and a bolster transforms into a red Swiss Army knife — no rivets, no bolster. “It’s a knife transformation,” Regal says. The routine also resets during performance, keeping it ready to go at any moment.
The two new additions extend what the routine can accomplish. A 1/3–2/3 knife enables a slow-motion color change — a visual effect the previous set could not achieve. The other allows a performer to close with a fully examinable Swiss Army knife, ending completely clean.
The Color Changing Knives has roots stretching back nearly a century. British magician and illusion builder Walter Jeans (1877–1942) is generally credited with creating the effect in the 1930s — a pocket-sized illusion that would prove to have an outsized legacy. Decades later, legendary Spanish magician and theorist Arturo de Ascanio elevated it into a subject of serious study, publishing a foundational treatise in 1958 in Spanish that examined the effect through the lens of naturalness, psychological timing, and the precise management of a spectator’s attention. In 1975, Jose de la Torre released Ascanio’s World Of Knives in English which helped make the routine a staple of every close-up magician’s act. Ascanio’s influence on knife magic remains profound; his principles are still studied by close-up performers worldwide.
With his meticulous engineering of the props and equal attention to performance theory, Regal takes his place in that lineage.
The prop’s manufacturing reflects a level of investment unusual even by Regal’s standards. “I use an overseas knife manufacturer,” he told Conjurly. “I found this manufacturer by paying five different companies to make prototypes to my specifications and evaluating the results. This is not an economical process, but it is unavoidable.” He adds an extra layer beyond that: “I have examined every knife in every set. Yes, my DNA is on the knives.”
“I can honestly say I am proud of these props,” Regal told Conjurly. “I realize we are all different, but for me they tick all the boxes. I like seeing the eyes of a magician when they hold one of the knives in their hand for the first time. The weight and shape make the knives want to do the move.”
The set includes nearly 40 minutes of instruction from Regal covering his complete routine, handling nuances, timing, and the subtleties that make every move invisible.
Performer Norman Beck offers the clearest measure of the set’s practical value: “These knives have gone in my close-up case to use in the real world for real people. That is my highest recommendation.”
Availability is tight. Murphy’s Magic, the primary wholesale distributor, is already sold out of this production run. Retail stores retain limited stock. Regal told Conjurly he has placed an order for a new run, which he estimates will be available in approximately 90 days.
David Regal’s Color Changing Knives Deluxe is available through magic retailers at $150.
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