Stock Blaster Styling: 2008 brainstorming

[isoaker]

What sort of styling do YOU prefer seeing on the water blasters you use? Do you prefer more realistic styling, albeit needing to be in garish colours due to various safety laws in some areas or do you like more fantasy-like styles? Are there particular colour schemes you like or other schemes that you hope should never again be used on a water blaster?

For those who care not about looks and only for performance, this thread is not for you. While looks and design come second to performance in my mind, I still prefer using a water blaster that says PERFORMANCE WATER BLASTER even before unleashing the first blast.

If you have some favourite blaster designs in mind from stock blasters that were once or still are on the market, please do give us examples. If you are still waiting for the day your preferred water blaster style becomes reality, do you best to describe what you have in mind.

Please note: this thread is solely for water blaster design. While some designs make aspects of blaster performance harder or easier to achieve, let's leave out the performance part of the equation for the moment and focus solely on the aesthetics.

[Jim likes SS's]

I prefer blasters that look more realistic than futuristic. I prefer blasters like the CPS 2000 over, for example, the fantasy ones (cant think of any precise names atm, im too tired) Blasters such as the Flash Flood and the Arctic Blast look good too, sort of heavy assault guns. I'll post more detail tomorrow.

-Jim

[Aqua_Flash]

This is one of the reasons why I also don't like the new Hasbro soakers. However I'm going to stick to talking about design and not performance like mentioned.

I really hate their Nerf (N Strike whatever it is and such) styling on their blasters personally. It shows no sense of originality/uniqueness/creativeness compared to the older CPS and also air pressure soakers. A soaker to me always looks better when it has been designed to look good, but have simple lines to it, and the old Larami soaker designs did.

This is why I really liked the old Larami designs, they were simple, to the point and looked cool. Futuristic/space age but not overdoing the point. You could imagine them in their own little colourful hazy background world or planet. They didn't look blocky either like the new soakers from my point of view. The HydroBlitz to me is a great example of ugly and blocky. Even the Arctic Blast to me in terms of design isn't really my style of design, it looks like an iron to me.

I really liked the designs of soakers like the CPS 1500, CPS 2100, Monster (2001)/CPS 4100, Monster X and Splashzooka. Again, more fantasy style as while these looked a bit like some real guns, they just had something different about them that made their design look and fit nicely. The Splashzooka to me looks like a big, funky futuristic space style rocket launcher, I could go on but you get the point.

Also, for the colours I'm not really bothered about, I think the colours that have been used on older and newer soakers are good to me, there is a good blend of funky (CPS 2700, MI Flash Flood .etc) and sensible (CPS 1000, 1500, Monster (2001 .etc). There is a good balance. For how I play colours don't really matter (unless it is covered in pink ).

These are just my personal opinions, so don't go explaining to me that I'm wrong and that I need correcting.

[HBWW]

Just about any soaker painted in camo, black, or silver-ish looks very nice and I like the black and camo colors for their practical applications on the field. Unlike above, I like the N-Strike style slightly better than some of the other stuff I've seen, but more for the shape than the color scheme, especially considering how nice they look in black. (i.e. a black longshot or recon looks much nicer than a black CPS 2100, at least IMO) Not to mention, their rails, sights, stock, etc. are nice additions. (dispite the fact that some of those are crap, like the longshot "scope" or stock) Yes, it's no airsoft but it does the job for plastic toys.

However, the N-Strike style doesn't quite fit soakers that well. The STE and MI line provided some interesting designs, such as the defender, flash flood, etc. and have some more parallel areas with 90 degree bends as opposed to smooth curves, which I kind of liked better. My favorites for old soakers would be the Monster series, CPS 2000/2500/3200/3000, and the 1000. The 1200 wasn't as nice as the 1000 and the 2700 was just awkward. (not just the bizzare colors but the curves, handling, etc.)

In general, I prefer the darker colors when camo and/or black are not available. They're practical and never stand out excessively, both on the field and on the armory rack.

[mr. dude]

I like the big, but not overdone designs. Things like the CPS 2000, 2500 and Monster X, but not the XL, are the most intimidating designs I know of. Basically, it can be as long as it wants, but height and width should stay small.
If it's not supposed to be intimidating, then something like the Max-D 6000 is great, nice and compact. The Orca/Blazer have nice styling, but if they were a bit thinner, they'd look awesome. I also like backpack soakers with on-board pumps (APD, CPS 3000/3200).
As for colours, I'm very open. The blues (not bright), greys, camo, and black are all serious colours, and can be used on any soaker.
However, the whacky colours, such as all pink (Aquaflash mentioned it, though negatively ) would also appeal to me, since I am quite whacky myself
But of course, if performance is good, then I don't care if it's shaped like a tuna steak, I'll still buy it.

[isoaker]

I decided to do some colour sampling on some of my own fav. soakers. Haven't done them all just yet; I'll add in more as I get more time. However, I thought some may find these stock soaker colour palettes interesting to see.

[Croc]

Honestly, I like guns that can easily fit in any sized hand, with the normal colours of either nature or the CPS 2000

The darker greens, the several shades (Black, white, gray), the blues, if dark enough, the pale orange and DEFINITELY purple or hot pink will work on guns.

But then again, since the guns from super soaker have been decreasing in quality and performance, they don't deserve to put their paintjobs from old cps guns on the newer guns that they are releasing over the next little while. If BBT took the 2000's paintjob, they could make a sweet @$$ gun that would somewhat meet it's performance range. (If the censoring is not enough, I can censor it further)

[SuperDuperSoaker]

I think the coolest looking blaster ever was th super soaker CPS 2700




it looks so alieny (if that is a word)