Nerf Rival Finisher XX-700

Its finally here! I remember when I first saw this blaster in videos from Toy Fair, I thought it would probably become the new most popular Rival blaster, almost making the Kronos obsolete. The combination of a small size, low price and being magazine fed, plus the added feature of being able to reload the magazine while it's still in the blaster seems almost perfect. But is it? Well... kinda?

Contents

In the open front box you get the blaster itself, the magazine, seven rounds, and some instructions. Nothing special here, its pretty much just exactly what you'd expect to get. 

Overview

Upon first glance, the Finisher looks a lot like a Kronos, but with a magazine sticking out the bottom instead of an internal magazine. And thats essentially pretty much what it is. Like the Kronos, there's a top slide for priming, a safety, and an unjamming button, but unlike the Kronos, there's no hole on the top to load rounds, and instead there's a magazine well on the bottom with an almost Buzz Bee style button mag release. Pushing the magazine release slightly pops the magazine out, which is convenient. The prime feels about as heavy as a Kronos, but the priming handle is a bit mediocre, it has nice grippy grooves on the top, but the sides are just smooth glossy plastic, so I found that my hand wanted to slide off. It would be quite easy to add some grip tape or something similar to improve this, however. When the slide is in the rear position, the front of the barrel sticks out slightly, allowing it to chamber a round.

The other major problem I noticed right away is that the trigger is just simply awful in my opinion. For one thing, it has no contour to it at all and is simply a vertical slab of plastic. But the main issue is how it feels to pull. As you'll see in the internals pic below, there isn't a trigger spring, and it instead uses a plastic spring to return the trigger, and you can feel it. I don't really know how to describe the feeling of pulling the trigger, but it feels too heavy and just... not right? Honestly it feels exactly like it has a plastic spring and not a proper spring. The safety feels similarly awful, almost as if you're going to break something internally every time to flip it to safe. Luckily at least, I won't be needing to touch that as much as the trigger. There is also no jam door on this blaster, but I found that since the magazine well is quite shallow, it was easy enough to reach my fingers up into the breech from the bottom. 

The magazine that this blaster comes with is a 7 round opaque magazine, and it has a little gimmick. On the side is a small nub that can be pulled down to the bottom, where it latches, revealing a 3 round long hole on the side of the magazine through which it can be reloaded. 

This means that its possible to top up the mag while it is still in the blaster, kinda like how the X-Shot Meteor works. As a feature, this works fairly well, except for the glaring issue that you need to have at least two rounds in the magazine, or the little nub to open the loading gate is up inside the shell of the blaster and you can't actually get to it. I came up with a simple fix for this, but as designed it simply makes the magazine's main feature just not work as well as it should. This magazine is also not compatible with any other Rival blasters, but luckily all the other Rival magazines are compatible with the Finisher itself. 

Build Quality

As expected for a Nerf product, the finisher feels solidly build overall, and the plastic feels great. There are, however, a few exceptions. As I mentioned above, the blaster uses very few springs internally, relying instead on plastic springs for most internal springs. This is quite evident upon using any of the controls, they just don't feel as smooth as springs would, and everything just feels very slightly off. Once you know they're plastic springs thats exactly how I would describe the feeling, but if I didn't know, I would just think they felt a bit like they were designed poorly or didn't fit together right internally. Its not a deal breaker, but after recent blasters that just feel super good to use, like the Takedown, the Finisher feels notably, if slightly worse. 

Build Quality Grade: B+

Aesthetics

I'm still not 100% certain what I think of the aesthetics. Overall I like the look of it, but there are a few minor things that kinda frustrate me about the look. One thing that I honestly do like is that there's no paint on the blaster at all. Everything that is a color is colored plastic. While that does make it maybe look a bit cheaper, it also means that we don't have to deal with the usual one painted side and one unpainted side that we've come to expect from Hasbro blasters. I think overall this makes it look quite a bit better than it would with just paint on one side. 

My other biggest aesthetic disappointment is that the back half of the blaster, from right in front of the priming handle all the way to the back, is just smooth glossy plastic, while the grip is nicely textured and matte and the front half is lightly textured and also matte. It isn't a huge deal, but its just kinda weird to have different surface finishes on half the blaster. It also kinda annoys me that at the front right above the barrel there are three molded indents in the shell, except that the front one is fully cut out and is a hole and the back two are the same size and shape but aren't real holes. Overall though I'm just nitpicking, it matches the overall design language of the other Rival blasters and I think it looks quite cool. 

Aesthetics Grade: B

Performance

Another category without too much to say, this blaster hits pretty standard Rival velocities. I got an average of slightly above 90 fps on my chronograph, which is pretty much exactly what I expected. Not anything super special, but definitely good. 

Performance Grade: A-

Usability

I have to admit, this thing is quite usable. Being a decent performance magazine fed compact Rival blaster means it would work great as a primary, but could also potentially be used as a secondary, although the magazine sticking out would make it difficult to holster. As a primary, I'm sure we'll soon see mods to turn it into pump action, and mods to add a stock attachment point, which would turn it into a proper primary. I know I will definitely be using it in games quite a bit, it will be a great option for when I don't want to carry around something large, but I still want magazine fed and Rival performance. The included magazine will be very useful for scavenging ammo, and I love that I can top it off easily but also carry extra magazines in case I need to just swap mags instead. Now if we could just get that 30 round Rival drum actually released I can only imagine how much fun that would be in this blaster. 

As far as just reloading the magazine though, I will say, reloading an empty mag from the side port instead of the top was slower in my tests, although maybe if I got used to it I could load more at a time. Reloading while the mag is in the blaster is also not as fast as it is with some other blasters, as the loading port isn't at the top or the bottom, meaning you have to load rounds between other rounds. Just kinda shoving them in does work though, since the Rival rounds don't get destroyed like darts do. 

Usability Grade: A

Mod Potential

This is a category that I'm not really sure about. This blaster can obviously take upgrade springs, and I'm sure you could get some better performance out of it, but the plastic springs might be a limiting factor. Sure, they don't matter as much for the mag release and safety, but the catch spring is also a plastic spring, and I am unsure how that will hold up to heavier spring loads. The part that the slide attaches to that actually pulls back the plunger is also plastic in plastic, without any metal pins, so a crazy heavy spring might also eventually cause that to break. 

Now, I have already modded mine, about an hour after I got it out of the package. There was one feature that drove me crazy, the fact that it was advertised that you could reload the magazine while it was still in the blaster, yet if you had less than two rounds in the magazine, the nub you pull to open the magazine's loading port was fully up inside the shell. The instructions don't actually even say anything about reloading the magazine while its in the blaster, and it is only possible to load one round at a time with the mag inserted. That being said, I knew we could easily solve the problem of not being able to load it in the blaster when it has less than two rounds in it. I simply used my dremel to remove the plastic over the top of the nub,

 

and then used a tiny bit of epoxy putty to extend the nub so you can get to it even when it is inside the blaster. I also re-added groves to the top of my epoxy putty to match those on the original part, to make it easier to grab. 

All in all this mod took about five minutes and should bring the blaster up to what it should have been originally. 

Mod Potential Grade: B+

Value for Money

Surprisingly, this blaster only costs $15. I would have honestly expected this to cost at least $20, given how Hasbro usually prices, so I was very happy to get it for $14.99. I guess having no paint and replacing metal springs with plastic saved enough money to achieve the lower price, and I have to say, for $15 its totally worth it. This might become the blaster I start recommending to people as a first blaster for HvZ or just in general. At that price point getting a blaster AND a magazine that has a unique feature is about as much as you could possibly hope for. Now, would I pay $20 if I could also get metal springs and paint on both sides? 100%. But for what it is, $15 is a surprisingly low price from Hasbro. Of course, you can still get other brands of blasters with proper springs and paint for the same price if not less. 

Value for Money Grade: A-

Final Grades

I'm still not certain how I feel about this blaster. Is it a great price for what you get? Definitely. Is it a fun and fairly good looking blaster? Definitely. Will it replace the Kronos or be the best Rival magazine fed blaster? Almost certainly not. It has a lot of great features at a great price, but the noticeable drop in quality for a Hasbro blaster isn't ideal, and the gimmick only kinda works. 

Weird Blasters 2: Hunson Dubostryke Rapid-Fire? Cool Combinations?

And we're back again for another weird blaster review! If you didn't see the first one, basically I'm doing a series of reviews of weird blasters, some really crappy knock-offs, some actually decent blasters that are just under reviewed and underappreciated. The one we have today is another cheap crappy blaster, but its significantly better than the one from last time.

Hunson Dubostryke Rapid-Fire/Cool Combination Soft Bullet Gun

Yet another blaster without a proper name, this blaster seems to be sold under multiple different brands and names. The box that I got mine in had Hunson listed as the brand, and then the box said Dubostryke and Rapid-Fire, but there are other blasters with the same thing on their boxes, so it seems to be a line of products and not the name of this specific blaster? (Also I don't even know if it says Dubostryke or Dub Stryke with a picture of a target in the middle, I found listings for other Hunson blasters that clearly say just Dub Stryke, but also listings calling it Dubostryke) The blaster itself says Cool Combination and Soft Bullet Gun, but upon searching for Cool Combination, there's at least one other blaster packaged with that name, so this blaster doesn't really have a name. I've seen images of the same exact blaster with the same colors but different darts packaged in at least three different packages, so I'm not sure who actually makes it or what to call it.

I found this blaster on ebay, I was just browsing for weird crappy blasters to review and I saw this one. Pretty much as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to buy it. The shell is just so unique. It looks cheap and crappy, but doesn't look like other cheap crappy blasters? The aesthetics are very different, and I just loved the overall look. I paid $12.50 for the blaster and another $11 for shipping, but I'm not sure what the blaster's actual MSRP is supposed to be.

Contents

This package contains the blaster itself, a belt clip dart holder, and 10 darts. There are very simple instructions on the back of the box, but no instructions in the box, and there is a target printed on the inside behind the blaster, but it isn't perforated or anything, so if you want to use it you'll have to cut it out and find a way to stand it up or hang it yourself. 

Overview

This blaster, despite having a very cool looking shell, is barely any more complex then the absolute simplest dart firing mechanism. You simply front load one dart, pull back on the handle to prime it, and then fire. The one thing I didn't expect is that the handle actually auto returns after you prime it, so it doesn't stay sticking out like a Firestrike. The handle of the blaster is tiny and has a handguard that makes it far worse, allowing only my trigger finger and two others to fit in, albeit uncomfortably.

The priming handle is fairly well sized however, and I can comfortably fit two fingers into it to prime the blaster. The blaster is quite small overall considering its design, it has a rifle shape but is definitely not rifle sized. 

The belt clip dart holder that the blaster comes with is an interesting design, it is curved. presumably to match the shape of your body, has 14 holes for darts even though the blaster only comes with 10, and a small clip on the back that allows it to attach to thin belts. 

The curve is far too extreme for probably anyone who isn't a very small child, and because the belt loop is in the middle of the concave part, it kinda causes the sides to dig into your body when trying to wear it. There's also for some reason no bottom to it, so if the darts are at all worn out, they'll definitely drop straight out of it during use. I attached it to a belt, put darts in it and ran across my apartment and back, it stayed securely on the belt, but one dart fell out and all the others dropped down a good inch or so, so they probably wouldn't stay in very well during an intense game. I might actually use it for games of Trouble in Terrorist Town or other less intense games though, since it does work decently if you find darts that fit well in it. It would also be very possible to simply glue a piece across the bottom of it so that darts can't drop out.

The darts that come with this blaster are simply horrible. They're FVJs, and their size is very inconsistent. As you can see here, they're far shorter than standard darts, and the two I photographed here not only are different lengths, but slightly different colors for some reason too.

Some of them are quite notably longer or shorter than others, and in my testing they performed worse out of this blaster than other darts, despite having a better barrel fit. I see no reason to ever use them assuming you have literally any other darts at all. 

Build Quality

Its not good. Now, its not the worst I've felt, but its definitely not good. The blaster is very light, far lighter than a Hammershot despite being almost twice the length. I weighed them both on my kitchen scale and the Hammershot was a good 100 grams heavier. 

The plastic doesn't feel like it would break immediately from use, but I'd be wary of even dropping it onto concrete. It is clearly very thin, you can push on parts of the blaster and feel it flex, and holding it up to the light on the "nice" side you can see the screws showing through. The paint application is also quite bad, I've only had this blaster for a few days and already some paint is starting to come off on raised parts of the shell, and there are areas where the paint is just applied poorly and it spills over onto other sections. Some of the screws also appeared to already be partially stripped when I got it, I would be concerned about taking it apart and putting it back together multiple times, although there are a weirdly massive number of screws, so if some strip I suppose its not the end of the world. Seriously why are there so many screws on a blaster this size?

Build Quality Grade: C-

Aesthetics

I know that this is very subjective, but I adore the aesthetics of this blaster, and they're the reason I bought it as soon as I saw it. The part above the barrel immediately reminded me of the old Max Force Razorbeast, and the aesthetics as a whole reminded me of vintage Nerf lines in general. Unfortunately, I didn't have a Razorbeast to compare it to, but a Sawtooth is close enough I suppose. 

I could see this fitting in with vintage Nerf if it was different colors and better build quality. So many off brand super cheap blasters have incredibly chaotic shells with just far too much going on, but this blaster is the opposite. The shell is actually sleek and fairly simple, with some cool looking details that don't clutter it too much. If the shell was bigger I would definitely want to integrate it into something more functional. 

Aesthetics Grade: A

Performance

The first thing I noticed when I started messing with this blaster is that it has a perfect air seal. Not just a good air seal, but its one of the best air seals I've ever seen. I used a stopwatch to time for one minute of holding my finger over the barrel after firing, and the plunger still moved forward after I removed my finger. I have no idea why the seal is so good, but its truly impressive. That being said, the performance isn't great. The plunger tube is tiny and there's some dead space, so even with the perfect seal I was only getting results of around 40-50 FPS with Adventure Force waffle darts. With the included darts, which seem to have a better fit in the barrel I was somehow only getting about 32-37 FPS. The waffle tips do fit quite loose in the barrel, there's some fins for lack of a better term at the back of the barrel that serve to narrow it to squeeze the back end of the dart in, but the rest of the barrel is very loose. Performance overall was better than I expected, nothing amazing, but definitely not as bad as I thought it would be. 

Performance Grade: C

Usability/Stupidity

As I said in the last review, for this type of review instead of grading based on usability, I'm grading based on stupidity, with stupider blasters getting better grades, since this is what this type of review is all about. That being said, this blaster is definitely less stupid than I thought it would be. Is it war practical? No. Is it war usable? Honestly, yes. It shoots about as well as a Jolt, and while that isn't impressive, I'd say its good enough to use for fun in a low FPS game. The fact that you have to front load isn't ideal. but it isn't any worse at rate of fire than any other front loader. I think this blaster pretty well strikes the balance between usability and stupidity, its stupid enough to be fun, but usable enough to not just be frustrating. 

Stupidity Grade: B

Mod Potential

Honestly, I'm not certain about this one. I'm sure a better spring could be added, although I didn't have a single spring in my collection that would fit inside the plunger tube. It might be possible to brass the barrel, considering how good the air seal is, but considering that the better fitting darts that came with it performed worse than the loose waffle darts, I'm not certain that that would actually be beneficial unless the spring was also upgraded. I don't know how long the cheap internals would last with a spring upgrade, but part of me really does want to find a better spring and brass it and see what kind of performance I can get out of the tiny plunger. Overall though, I don't really think its worth the time and effort it would take to mod, probably. 

Mod Potential Grade: C

Value For Money

This is another difficult category, since I wasn't able to find it listed anywhere other than the ebay listing that I bought. Assuming that it does sell for the $12.50 that I paid for it, I'd say that it is honestly kinda worth it. Its not a great blaster, heck, its not even really a good blaster, but its a very unique shell and it is usable enough to be a fun joke blaster. Don't pay $11 for shipping though, it was definitely not worth the $23 I paid, but I also don't regret it. 

Value for Money Grade: B-

Final Grades

This blaster is one of the more unique off brand blasters I've found, and I just really really love the shell for some reason. Its a pretty meh blaster though. 

Weird Blasters: Tiny Off-Brand Element? CY052 Review

Weird Blasters 

I adore stupid blasters. I've been called the "Beret of our nerf group", and I tend to run incredibly dumb things in our small indoor wars. As a result, I have acquired quite a collection of these awful blasters, and I thought I'd start a series of reviews on them. These will not strictly be awful cheap knockoffs, but I also want to use this series to bring attention to blasters that maybe are actually usable, but don't get covered by prominent reviewers in the hobby. We are definitely starting with an awful cheap knockoff, though.

CY052

Honestly, I don't know what to call this blaster. CY052 was the only text on it, besides a tiny hidden string of numbers, so thats what I'll refer to it as. I got this blaster, I believe, a few years ago from a friend. At the time, he was working at a bowling alley, and told me that they had a dart blaster as one of their arcade prizes. I told him I wanted one, and he was able to get it for me. Upon looking into it, I believe that it comes from a company called Toys+, but I couldn't find much about it.

Contents

I got this blaster years ago, and I don't remember even how it came in the packaging, or if it was even in the packaging when I got it. I believe that it came with 4 darts and the blaster, and thats it. Now, the darts it comes with are... quite something. They're about the same size as normal foam darts, but instead of having a soft rubber tip or even a hard vinyl tip, the heads are literally just solid plastic. I can't imagine getting shot by one of these out of anything that actually shoots decently, it would sting quite a bit. 

Overview

This blaster is pretty much what you'd expect from the absolute cheapest knockoff. Aesthetically, the design is clearly stolen from the old Element EX-6. Unlike a lot of knockoffs that seem to be based on an existing shell, this one is pretty much an EXACT copy of the Element, with an added front sight post, the dart storage changed to hold 3 instead of 5, oh, and its like, literally half the size. Unfortunately I don't have an Element currently to compare it to, but next to a Hammershot you can see that its truly minuscule. 

There is a simple priming handle on the back, reminiscent of a Tek 3 or other tiny blasters, which a finger barely fits into to prime it. The trigger is also tiny, but at least its functional. I can barely get my finger into the trigger area its so tiny. The grip is also tiny, only fitting two fingers, but without taking into account the awful trigger guard, the grip is actually fairly comfortable. Up at the top, there's a rail, but considering that this is a scaled down Element, its a scaled down Nerf rail that doesn't fit anything.

Build Quality

Considering what it is, the build quality is shockingly decent. No where near even the likes of X-Shot and Dart Zone, but it doesn't feel too much worse than old Buzz Bee blasters. There's very little creak in the plastic, and while it feels cheap, it doesn't feel like it'll break as soon as I prime it. The priming handle itself is hollow on the bottom and the walls are quite thin and could easily be snapped, but I don't think it would break during normal operation. 

Build Quality Grade: C+

Aesthetics

Honestly, they're good. Its a mini Element, and the Element is a classic Nerf design. I think it scales down fairly well, and it makes a cool looking little subcompact pistol. I don't have a ton more to say here, since its literally just an Element. 

Aesthetics Grade: B

Performance

Ah, now we get to the good part for any awful knockoff. I will say, it does fire darts. Kinda. It's one of the blasters that uses an internal punching mechanism, rather than a plunger, so there's no air being pushed around at all. It literally just smacks the back of the dart with a rod, and that pushes it out of the barrel. 

With the included darts, it smacks them maybe about 10 feet with a really good shot. I tried elites, Adventure Force waffles, half darts, X-Shot darts, heck, I even tried one of the Valken Gotcha balls. Most projectiles barely even leave the barrel, averaging maybe 5-7 feet. I tried to chronograph this blaster, but couldn't, as no projectile I tried would read, and some didn't even make it across the chrony. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is probably my worst performing blaster that actually functions. 

One other feature of note here: because the "plunger" has to hit the dart when its all the way forward, you actually cannot load a dart into the barrel without priming it first, as the plunger rod is in the way. 

Performance Grade: F

Usability/Stupidity

For this type of review, I'm switching the usability section up a bit, since most of the blasters I'm going to be talking about aren't really intended to be usable, but are intended to be run for fun when a stupid blaster is the goal. Therefore, the scoring for this section will be higher the stupider the blaster is. 

That being said, this blaster is probably the least usable and one of the stupidest blasters possible. It does fire standard darts, which is a plus, and it can technically fire anything you can cram down the barrel, so you wouldn't have to worry about finding the right niche ammo or anything. Considering the range offered, you're barely better than melee and you have to reload between shots, so a sword would be far more effective in general. 

Stupidity Grade: A-

Mod Potential

There's not much. The spring inside is tiny, no other springs I have in my collection are even close to the right size, and even if you could find a better spring to go in it, I don't think you'd get much of a performance boost and there's a good chance it would just break itself. I did try adding some rubber bands to the outside, adding more force pushing the plunger forward and got it to hit maybe 15 feet flat, but I still couldn't even get the darts to register over my chronograph. Lets just say there's not really any point in modding it.

Mod Potential Grade: D

Value for Money

This section doesn't really apply super well to weird and stupid blasters, since you clearly aren't buying them because they're great deals, but for this blaster in particular, I don't even know how much it would cost or where you could even get it, but any price would probably not be super worth it unless you really like the idea of a tiny little Element. 

Value for Money Grade: D-

Final Grades

Its a truly terrible blaster that I can't ever recommend to anyone. That being said, getting a kill with this thing in a game would be immensely satisfying and horribly shaming of the target, and I'll probably run it at some point.