Career
Robbins is known for a variety of carnival acts such as sword swallowing, hammering a nail into his nostril, and eating glass items including wine glasses and light bulbs. Robbins estimates he has eaten more than 5,000 light bulbs throughout his career, sometimes consuming up to 21 per week.
Robbins has been featured on more than 100 television shows, which include multiple appearances on David Letterman, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien; Masters of Illusion; and the NBC special Extreme Variety. He was a featured guest on Criss Angel Mindfreak and is also the main subject of the 2005 documentary American Carny: True Tales From The Circus Sideshow directed by Nick Basile.
Robbins is one of five partners in the longest running off-Broadway show, Monday Night Magic. Fellow magician Jamy Ian Swiss who co-produces Monday Night Magic calls Robbins "just so damn good at everything."
He starred in an off-Broadway show Carnival Knowledge which ran from 2002 to 2004 and featured Robbins eating light bulbs and swallowing swords. He also served as dean of the sideshow school in Coney Island, where for $600 he would teach about the history of sideshow acts as well as instruct the students how to swallow swords or lie on a bed of nails.
In 2008 he toured as part of a stage show called Hoodwinked with Bob Arno, Banachek and Richard Turner.
In 2009 Robbins was featured in a Ripley's Believe It or Not! cartoon panel noting that he had "chewed and swallowed over 4,000 light bulbs."
In 2010 Robbins starred in Play Dead, written by Robbins and Teller of Penn & Teller, a "throwback to the spook shows of the 1930s and ’40s" that ran September 12–24 in Las Vegas before opening Off Broadway in New York at The Players Theatre.
Todd Robbins has worked for Ripley's Believe It Or Not! and was also a ringmaster at the Big Apple Circus.
Todd Robbins, partnered with Stephen Ringold, has been master of ceremonies for many years at the annual Chile Pepper Fiesta at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Read more about this topic: Todd Robbins
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