A Great Value for a Good Starter Set

It was a must to finally alert you to this NERF Dart Tag League 2-player starter pack. This thing is a great value to get you and a friend started in the world of dart tag. Check out the video to learn all about what comes in the set and what the best parts are.

A Little Too Real

Take a look at this picture to the left. The "Splash Master Reloadable Magazine Water Pistol" has 3 magazines and several belt clips to help make it look and feel like the "real thing". This image represents the joy of many a kid and the terror of many adults. Toy guns have been around about as long as firearms themselves, so accidental shootings thanks to toy guns have been a real and scary thing for several years.

For as long as I can remember, I've been enamored with realistic looking water pistols. Perhaps it came from the desire to be uniquely well-equipped against the bad guys I was blasting in my head. Maybe instead it was because I was curious about the workings of real firearms. Or possible still, I was already a stickler for accurate role-playing. In any case I've loved the getting my hands on good props since I was a young boy.

Once when I was a pre-teen, I was on a family trip and made what I considered to be a great find. At the Family Dollar we stopped at, there were some great looking water pistols that mimicked an M1911 and a German Luger. I grabbed those things about as fast as I could. My parents weren't the happiest, but lt it pass. Of course a short time later, I got the idea to paint them black for use in student films and such.

While it seemed like a good idea to me, it was exactly what my parents and many politicians were afraid of. Check out this New York Times article from 1998. About this time and within the next few years after, it became much harder to find realistic looking toy guns in my local area. Even convincing Airsoft (and equivalent brands) guns became more rare. While this was to my lament in teen years, I still understood why. Kids aren't known or even expected to be the most responsible people on the planet. They can do some fairly dumb things, not the least of which is to wave what looks like a gun at the wrong people.

I'm all for having fun and finding the next cool product to play with, but let's hope toy makers continue to use some common sense. This is the currently available version of that water pistol we were looking at. This color isn't likely to get you shot. I picked it up at the Walgreens down the street from Click Click BAMF HQ. Yeah, I'll likely paint it for use in one of my independent films, but that's on me. You won't be seeing one of my little nephews running around with it.

~Chris Jacobs

Patriots and Blasters

Meet the new Captain America disk launching shield. We were hoping to release this review on Memorial Day, but it just wasn't in the cards . . . or disks. Nothing like red, white and blue to celebrate a patriotic holiday. Remember as you enjoy these toys and watch Captain America: The First Avenger on July 22nd, that these things were created to help tell the stories of heroes.

Most blasters are fashioned to look a lot like real guns. Guns are used for good and bad. I'm willing to bet most of you imagine yourselves to be on the side of good. So remember that men and women are wielding the real things every day for you and us! Whatever country you live in or miss, remember to love it. Thanks for reading and enjoy the review.

~Chris Jacobs

Click Click BAMF Goes "Green"

It was a step toward "going green" yesterday. We finally purchased a battery charger so as to quit disposing of so many batteries ranging from AAA to D over and over again. Admittedly this move was as much for the savings as it was for helping the environment. What do you expect from a growing company? Really, it's not a bad way to hit two birds with one stone.

It's a simple step to take in order to both spend and pollute less, but you do need a little cash. The MSRP on this Energizer charger is $29.99. Don't ask me why I chose Energizer -maybe it was visions of a green bunny following me around, pounding a drum. I also had to drop $9.50 a piece for the 4-packs of AA batteries I grabbed. So with the money spent so far we could nearly buy a NERF Stampede. 

The initial investment may seem like a good chunk of money, but then the payoff happens. The packaging of the AA Energizer Rechargeable packs say that they can be recharged up to 250 times and that they last four times as long as regular AA batteries (when tested in digital cameras). We usually buy Rayovac batteries, which are the least expensive brand we've found locally. We are able to buy 30 AA batteries for about the same a four rechargeable Energizer AAs. Ignoring the suggestion that these rechargeables last 4-times as long, we'll still be using these batteries when we'd be buying our 34th pack of Rayovacs! It would be our 134th pack if you do count the extra duration.

There are a couple of other things to take into account though. If you've seen our arsenal, you know there are a LOT of blasters for us to power. Only having four AA batteries wouldn't go very far to power our full arsenal. Luckily the charger we purchased (and seen above) can hold 8 AA or AAA, 4 C or D, or 2 9V batteries at a time. Another point is that it takes three to seven hours to recharge anhy batteries. Yet if they really last four times as long, it may not really be an issue since you can probably just pop them in at the end of the day. I grabbed two of the AA 4-packs to start. We'll try those and some D batteries for the Stampede and Vulcan for a bit and report back on their performance.