Ars Technica posts about one of Hasbro's new squirt guns

[HBWW]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011 ... p=21610989

Of course, I submitted a comment ranting about how bad their motorized squirt gun is and directed to water blasters of use. =)

Edit: Amongst the comments, someone has some Entertech Uzi and posted some pics of it.

[isoaker]

Article FAIL. Magazines of water guns are far from new. Hasbro did improve the magazine design by increasing capacity a bit over the 1970s/1980s models and making it not spill so easily when filled, but not attached to the blaster, but that's about it.

But the thing that really bugged me about that article is the statement that "water comes out in one steady, strong stream". Strong stream?! That reviewer needs to be better educated about the world of water weaponry.

I enjoyed your comment, though. No one appears to have replied after yours at the time of this post, but would be interested to see if anyone else comments on your comment.

[HBWW]

It looks like the SS Thunderstorm overall is getting a lot of attention out of nowhere. Even the Tarantula didn't get anywhere near as much attention.

[cantab]

The Thunderstorm looks cool. All the current range do. And I wouldn't be surprised if Hasbro are up to viral marketing.

[HBWW]

It gets attention I think because of so many "nerd" sites that don't have the slightest clue about water guns and are fascinated by it because very few blasters are motorized and have a mag system, even if that's because such systems suck and never work as well as traditional pump-from-the-reservoir.

[thelaminator]

It looks like the SS Thunderstorm overall is getting a lot of attention out of nowhere. Even the Tarantula didn't get anywhere near as much attention.

it's probably because the t-storm has a very strong ad campagin, especially compared to the tarantula.

[HBWW]

That's part of it, as well as its look and magazine swapping gimmick. (It wouldn't be a gimmick if the mags could hold a half-decent amount of water.)

[Nitro123PG]

Like the water drums I mentioned earlier that could hold 50-60 oz. of water. THAT could be a decent system, though I'd still prefer a backpack blaster.

[HBWW]

If each mag could hold at least 500mL and feed a decently sized reservoir, it might be semi-useful, but obviously, backpacks, pouches/fanny packs, etc. are superior.

[Nitro123PG]

I wonder if a modification could be done to turn a Raider drum into a water clip? Of course, the Raider is a good Nerf gun, and the Thunderstorn and Tornado Strike are both terrible Super Soakers, so who would do that?

[HBWW]

Sounds like a pretty pointless mod, and would require far more work than it's worth. All a water magazine is is a water container with a connection that can be quickly attached and detached and seals reliably. If loaded from the top, an intake tube is unnecessary, but to keep the bottom design (which arguably balances better), an intake tube is necessary. Either way, a reliable, sealed connection is needed. Anyway, point is, a Nerf magazine resembles a real firearm's magazine far more than a swappable water reservoir.

[Nitro123PG]

Agreed. Although they are not really clips, I like the swappable water resovoir idea BBT put into the Chameleon, and the extra tanks you could buy for the original Super Soakers. That's as close to clips the water warfare world should get, however.

[HBWW]

There's no clips anywhere; recent Nerf blasters (except automatics) use magazines. http://www.thegunzone.com/clips-mags.html

Anyway, water reservoirs don't really qualify as either clips nor mags, but they can be defined as a "container of ammo", so it's not far of a stretch to refer to them as magazines.

However, when referring to Hasbro's new squirters, one can refer to them as mags in the sense that that's what they're designed to directly resemble. Indeed the entire 2011 line is centered around a look and feel that resembles that of actual firearms, and that is part of why performance suffers; the frames of real firearms are designed to shoot projectiles (so such designs work well for Nerf, Paintball, and Airsoft) and thus are too compact to hold enough water to perform well as a water gun.

Anyway, Hasbro's attempts to milk out money are so painfully obvious by the magazine system. The new blasters are not only ridiculously overpriced, they only come with one mag. That's a measly squirt gun sized 275mL (less than a Max-D 2000's reservoir) and if you want more, you have no choice but to pay up and buy more mags or perform modifications, though at least they had the half-decency to make the mags relatively easy to refill..

[wetmonkey442]

There's no clips anywhere; recent Nerf blasters (except automatics) use magazines. http://www.thegunzone.com/clips-mags.html

In all seriousness, I think that removable magazines work as long as they don't look anything at all like a real gun. For example, the Triple Charger worked really great because the magazines were shaped in a completely practical manner.

[HBWW]

CVF: Check Valve Freeze, no longer used term that refers to PRVD (the PRV is a type of check valve, but PRV's are never referred to as check valves since it is not specific enough, and the valve is never "frozen")

The colossus is for cylindrical bladders while the K-mod is for spherical, and blah blah blah only works on blah blah blah.

I be damned if I try to explain the difference between a sock and a shoe, or a tire and a wheel to a kid. Who cares anyway, they're all just the same thing right?

Anyway, the only reason why firearm-inspired shaping doesn't work is because of volume, but that's a rather generalized statement. Take the AT2 guided rocket launcher for instance; I'm sure its shape has plenty of room for a CPS bladder.

While we're at it, I still prefer referring to them as swappable reservoirs instead of mags, I only call Nerf's squirt gun reservoirs mags because that's what they're trying to resemble. (That's just me though, at that point it actually doesn't matter.)

[isoaker]

When it comes to swappable mags/reservoirs/tanks, the more I think about it, the more useless they become. Presently, the swappable systems available now and in the past do not hold much water. Sure, older blasters like the Triple Charge, Triple Play, Chameleon held ok amounts of water for their blaster model, but the volumes still weren't great. Now, people say that if volumes were increased, it'd be better, right? Thing is, bigger volumes means you'll need to be carrying around these extra tanks somewhere. When dealing with volumes above 1L (>33oz), forget about using just a belt clip unless you want to really feel funny when walking/running. In the worst-case-scenario, the weight on one's belt will cause one's pants to drop mid-run and make one trip and fall. Ok, then just put the extra tanks in a backpack? Then to switch, you'll need to swing around and/or remove your backpack, grab the extra tank, and swap. To me, seems like it'd only take a touch longer to use some sort of fast-fill-bottle and refill a good, fixed reservoir than it would take to swap a larger mag.

Some things that work well with real and foam fire arms just don't work as well with water weaponry. Give me bigger fixes reservoirs and larger backpack reservoir tanks any day over swappable magazines.

[HBWW]

The only benefit that swappable reservoirs and water refill bottles have over backpacks is that they don't require the tubing connection. Otherwise, the backpack reservoir is to the water blaster as the belt of rounds is to machine guns and grenade launchers.

Swappable reservoirs however, cost too much. A water bottle over a decently sized reservoir is much cheaper and works better, in that you're never limited in reservoir capacity to the magazine/reservoir's capacity. You may have to wait for the water to dump into the reservoir and then cap it when you're done, but during that time you can still shoot, and it doesn't take that much longer than swapping reservoirs anyways.

Backpacks and bottles are the best. I think Hasbro's trying to sell the "no pumping required" as a gimmick which would explain why everything on their new line except the HC is so awful. (Not that the HC is much better; it was severely gimped perhaps to "balance" out with the rest of the line.) The fact that it has gotten so much attention is just as bad.

[scottthewaterwarrior]

A clip system that only holds like 10 oz of water is useless! It's a nice concept but you could probably only carry maybe 5 clips on you and it would make much more sence to just make the gun have a 60 oz fixed tank. Water guns are not like real guns, as far as real weaponry goes I'd compare them most to flame throwers, but even that just because they both have tanks. I have always thought that the Reservoir of a water gun is like your extra clips and your pressure chamber is like your current clip. To carry extra reservoirs is ridicules (no, I never carry water bottles with me, of course not! I deny every thing!). In real war you don't carry extra clip clips, do you? No, of course not, that’s what ammo crates are for, A.K.A. hoses! You can compare water guns to real weaponry but it’s impractical to try and make it work the same way. OK, that probably made less and less sense as it went on, sorry, just kind of lost it and went on a rant.

Actually maybe if they made a clip system that worked like the Max-infusion system except used clips to attach the backpacks it might be practical. But that would still assume that Hasbro would make some guns worth attaching the clips to, which isn’t very likely.