In any case, when he arrived, he pulled out a Boom Co. Whipblast and almost immediately we went to Toys R Us to find more. Post-Christmas, pre-New Years, they were pretty well discounted. The two blasters I'll be discussing here were purchased for seven dollars (Whipblast) and six dollars (Farshot), a price which I find exceedingly reasonable.
The top blaster is the Farshot, the bottom blaster is the Whipblast. For frame of reference, here they are next to a stock Nite Finder.
So, that's what they look like. The Farshot is a little smaller in all dimensions than a Nite Finder (closer to a Scout, although I don't have one on-hand to show side-by-side), and the Whipblast is slightly larger in length and height and about the same thickness.
The Boom Co. blasters use a fairly novel dart system. A pretty good way to imagine them is a heavy straw, capped with silicone, although this is somewhat of an oversimplification. The dart width is slightly less than that of Nerf darts. I don't have calipers but my offhand estimation via ruler is 3/8", as compared to the 4/8" of a Nerf Elite streamline. The dart length is the same, though; 2-3/4". I don't have a sufficiently fine scale, nor a disassembled Boom Co. dart, to compare the weight of the heads or bodies as compared to the heads and bodies of regular Nerf darts, but I would guess that the weights are very similar, probably not off by more than a tenth of a gram. It feels like these new darts are far more stable in flight. Like the darts we make in the community, the heads are totally solid and the weight is concentrated at the very tip, rather than running any part of it into a stem.
The target underneath the darts is a sticker that comes with the Whipblast blaster (a target came with the Farshot, too, in a slightly different shape). As advertised, these darts stick extremely well to whatever material this is. When Pants took out the blaster, I picked up a dart and walked around a room, trying to get it to stick to things. I was unsuccessful; he said he did the same thing when he first bought it, and found the same result. I don't know what material this is; it would be fun if it were more available, as having a vest made out of this stuff would be far more fun than the Dart Tag system ever was. When these darts stick to the target material, they really stick. The heads splay out like they were a wad of fresh gum on the ground that a person has stepped on. With a fresh target and dart, it can be a nontrivial effort to get it unstuck if shot at close range. If the stickiness starts to fade, the darts and surface are washable and this seems to improve the sticking ability.
As a part of the gameplay intended for these blasters, each one comes with a shield system, which is coated in the target material. This way, you can catch the darts of your opponent and reuse them. It's a neat idea. Here is the target system expanded on the Farshot.
As a quick aside, some readers may have noticed the "tac rail"-type stuff on top of the Whipblast, and along the top of the Farshot. I have good news for you: the dimensions are the same as those on the Nerf systems, and the equipment is interchangeable. Unfortunately, without a barrel conversion of some variety, it would be difficult to shoot these darts in a Nerf blaster.
Now, I'll talk specifically about the two blasters that I purchased.
* * *
Mattel Boom Co. Farshot:
The Farshot, pictured above with its target shield removed, is a small pistol very similar in size to the Nerf Scout. As seen in the comparison picture above, it is smaller than a Nite Finder. The draw is about 1-3/4". I have not opened the blaster, but it is direct plunger and it gives a decent amount of power. It exceeded the range of my stock Nite Finder with every shot, with both blasters held at as close to identical angles as I could manage. However, as it is a smaller blaster, the handle is also worse than that of a Nite Finder. I can't fit my pinkie onto the blaster, putting it in a similar class to the Panther and the SuperMaxx 750.
Personally, I really like the styling of these blasters, and I think this looks great. If the handle were more substantial, I would love to use one of these as a sidearm. The industrial styling with the cutouts is a neat touch and the plastic seems to be very high quality. The plunger rod is light and chunky; you can pull it back with the grey slide on top, or you can just prime it by pulling directly on the back of the plunger rod.
I don't exactly doubt their range claims of something like sixty feet, provided it was under the same conditions of Nerf ranges: heavily angled. I would guess that, once modded with a simple barrel replacement and nothing else, this would shoot approximately as far as one of the older-springed Nite Finders with a similar rebarreling. I did see that someone on NH modified one of these to shoot micro stefans, though I can't recall if they reported the power of the blaster.
If the handle were more substantial, I would also say that this would make an excellent shell for housing other things. I would bet money that one of the old, long Panther tanks would fit very well where the plunger is located.
One note, filed under "weird." This blaster operates with a safety system. It is impossible to pull the trigger if there is not a dart in the barrel. Again, I haven't opened the blaster, but there is some sort of gated air restriction system, and when the dart pushes past it, it opens both airflow from the plunger and de-locks the trigger. I'm not sure why they included it. I was surprised when I primed it immediately out of the box and couldn't fire.
* * *
Mattel Boom Co. Whipblast:
The above picture shows both my Whipblasts, one with its shield wings on display. I have been meaning to rebarrel this blaster but I also have been putting it off for about a week because of no reason. The one on the bottom is stock.
This is the first blaster I tried in the Boom Co. line and it is the most fun stock blaster I have used in several years, perhaps since the Airzone Powerstrike 48. The name "Whipblast" comes from the fact that this blaster is primed by rotating it along the circular track that surrounds the handle. The instructions first show the user priming it with two hands, but then encourages throw priming. The user holds down the blue trigger outside of the trigger guard, which unlocks the handle, and throws the blaster downward.
The teeth on the circle engage with internal gears, which in turn primes a plunger. Internal pictures of this system are below.
This blaster is EXTREMELY well made. In the picture immediately above, note the lock system at the back of the plunger tube. Nothing is needlessly adhered with glue, like on so many Nerf blasters. The plastic is chunky, there are metal pins sitting comfortably in the shell, and everything is lubricated. They clearly cared about making this system last.
The throw-priming system is awesome. I want to play with this blaster all the time, and any person who tries it out immediately gets enthralled with it. It was true at the Nerf war in late December, and it was true amongst a few friends of mine who saw it sitting in my place. The blaster actually primes before the body reaches the bottom of the handle; in the photo below, the catch has been engaged and the reader can see the back of the plunger rod slightly sticking out of the shell as a notifier to the user.
The blaster also locks at the bottom of the throw, so it is essentially upside down. This is the case because the shield system rotates, and you can use the blaster as a shield arguably better in this orientation. I think it's neat.
The power is slightly better than that of the Farshot. It is advertised as shooting ten feet farther (I forgot the precise claim, I recycled the box) and it does noticeably shoot better. I have opened this one up, but I haven't measured the draw, nor have I experimented with swapping springs.
This blaster is one-hand-primeable; it's super fun to play with two at once, swinging them around and shooting with both hands. Unfortunately, it is not one hand reloadable. There are a variety of solutions to this problem, but they're a mix of difficult to implement and difficult to engineer. The simplest solution, and the most ideal given the way the gun flips around, would be some kind of inline system, or a BRISC. I don't know if there's sufficient air volume to move darts in that case. I also don't know how effective a spring replacement would be, as it would make throw-priming the blaster a little more difficult than it is, and while it's very well engineered, it might not stand up to the new forces. This is why I have two, though. I want to experiment with one. I'll play around with other loading systems and we'll see if there's something that works for multiple shots.
One idea that came up (simultaneously, between three people) at the Nerf war was putting an airtank in this gun and converting the plunger system to a pump system. It would certainly take multiple throws to pump an airtank up to useable pressure, but most importantly this could all be done with one hand. Unfortunately this is a pretty difficult to engineer solution, definitely more complicated than an inline clip or BRISC. Alternatively it could be turreted, but that would still require turning the turret with the other hand each time, unless it was somehow linked to the gearing mechanism. In any case, I leave some of these ideas as exercises to the reader.
All in all, this is a fantastic blaster. It was on sale for seven dollars recently and at that price it was extremely worth it. It usually retails for fifteen, which is still great. This is a genuinely fun product and I bought two so I could modify one and still have one stock to play with. I didn't love the Farshot quite as much, but it's a neat blaster, and it was also worth the money I spent on it. I believe the single Farshot retails for ten, and a twinpack retails for twenty.
I like this line of blasters and I wish Mattel luck with their product. As it stands right now, the Rapid Madness blaster (the one similar in functionality to a Nerf Magstrike) is probably the only one with good usability in a regular Nerf war, and I would like to pick at least one up to play with. With the horizontal clip feeding, there actually doesn't seem to be a true restriction on the length of clip; indeed, Mattel has produced clips of twenty shots and in my dim memory I might recall seeing a forty shot clip. Plus, the styling is amazing, so it has that going for it.
Please let me know if you have any questions about these blasters, or if you have experience with other products in this line.
Edited by Ice Nine, 05 January 2015 - 06:02 PM.
