A Correction Concerning Xshot – And Now More Questions

I have to amend a previous post, the PSA about Xshot continuing to use the Blasterhub “Dart Range” test for advertising, despite it being well past time to let it go. At the end, I made the statement:

You’ve been doing so great recently with the redesigned blaster line, and have made sure people can use regular darts with most of your blasters. That’s a good thing. Perhaps sometime soon, you can bring your darts into the future, making them the same length as everything else and performing well for that low price you’re known for.

Turns out, their latest crop of Adventure Force rebranded blasters actually come with new darts. As pointed out by Valour (see his Youtube here for cool builds and lots more), the newest ones actually have different darts than before. When I grabbed the blasters initially, I didn’t even think to check the dart lengths. However, that raises new issues – and actually makes my main point a bit better.

More Compatible, But Not Everywhere?

One of the current Zuru Adventure Force packages, with the new darts included.

The Newest Xshot darts are actually 2.8″ long, and weigh roughly .93g each according to my measurements. The old ones measured 2.68″ long and .88g in mass, as of my last comparison. This now puts them at the same length as Buzz Bee darts. It also makes them long enough to reliably feed in almost all stock blasters, including Nerf flywheelers.

Strangely, this seems to only apply to the newer Adventure Force reskins – according to people who have them, the Ninja Xshot blasters (which aren’t on shelves yet) came with the shorter darts. So as far as we know, this is just a matter of Walmart wanting compatibility across all their blasters. In addition, these new darts would be too large for the current Xshot mag-fed blasters to use (they wouldn’t fit in the magazines).

 

But That Makes The “Dart Range Winner” Make Even Less Sense

However, this still means that there are blasters with new darts in them, that still have the badge on them.

That test they keep using for box advertising is from years ago, with a physically different dart. That’s like saying your car won best in class five years ago, and neglecting to mention that you redesigned the car this year. So, this award isn’t even for the same product.

In any case, this issue just got slightly weirder. Better compatibility is nice, admittedly, but the darts are limited in availability.