Lanard Shell Shock X-6 Clear

The Shell Shock X-6 is another one of the Lanard "Clear X" release of blasters that we stumbled across at our local mall; these blasters have been around in the US for some time but it is the first time I have seen them in Australia under the Lanard brand (more often than not Lanard stuff gets rebranded as Air Zone and sold overpriced at Toys R Us). From photos I've always liked the look of these and while I'm really not a fan of blasters with dart holder shells, I still decided to pick one up to see how if it was any good or not..

 The Shell Shock X-6 comes with the blaster, a 6 round clip, 8 darts and 8 dart holder shells. It comes in an open box packaging and looks different to the traditional Shell Shock boxes I've seen on the net. This is the "Clear-X" series; it's interesting to see other toy companies taking the cues from Nerf and re-releasing their blasters in different finishes. The blasters are practically paint free; just a few stickers and the orange and green details with the cocking mechanism and trigger.

Aesthetics-wise, the Shell Shock X-6 looks awesome. For me, it's one of the best looking blasters I've ever seen- it looks tough yet sleek with that over the top clip and hard and sharp lines. As a clear finish though, it loses something, but I think it still could be worse and be coated with cheesy bright candy colours like Buzzbee gear, so I didn't mind it. The Shell Shock feels good in the hand and is quite sturdy, though the cocking mechanism is stiff- but that's pretty standard with blasters that use dart holder shells.

The darts are to resemble hollow tip bullets and are shorter than a standard Nerf dart- you'd have to trim your Nerf darts down if you wanted to use them with the Shell Shock X-6. 

 The right side of the blaster has a small window where the dart holder shells 'eject' on cocking your blaster- I know this is a "cool" idea for some but I personally think it's annoying and somewhat useless. Using dart holders is just another thing for someone to lose, AND without them the blaster doesn't operate without modification so really, it's adding an extra element that doesn't need to really be there.

Loading the darts is a matter of sliding them into the dart holder shell, and then snapping them into the clip as you would with an N-Strike clip. You do have to make sure the dart holder groove is in the correct position in the clip or it won't fire.. something I discovered:)

The cocking mechanism is like a Nerf Recon- it's a manual pull back and forward on the top of the blaster. Once you've primed it, it's a squeeze of the trigger to fire; cocking it back again will eject the empty shell from the previous round and you're ready to go again.

Performance? Ok I have to say.. it's pretty crap. If even my fiancee could look over at me and say "wow that's pretty pez" I know it's not impressing anyone. It's not that far off the woeful X-Shot Thundershot in terms of ranges, barely making the 5-6 metre mark which I thought was pretty disappointing. Again there's always the ONE dart that goes better than the rest that makes you think "hmm maybe it's NOT that bad" but then the rest of them make you shake your head in wonder and you almost don't want to fire any more off because you don't want the hassle of looking for dart holder shells afterwards:) I think with trial and error you could adjust it- eg not pushing the dart all the way into the holder, or adjusting how it sits in the clip but it's still not..great.

I love the look of it, and don't regret buying it give the price, but it's definitely a poser/aesthetic blaster and probably would make for a mad looking prop/role play piece. If you wanna go into any form of battle though, I'd probably not recommend it; the hassle of looking for dart holder shells and the ordinary distances would have you pretty outclassed pretty quickly. Another all show no go blaster from our perspective.:P

Compared to the Maverick

Against the Maverick, Rotator X-8 and the Quickfire 12

We found ours at Myer Belconnen in Canberra ACT for 16.95- Not a bad price I guess but there ARE better alternatives. However for the looks- if I was an aesthetic modder I'd wanna snap these up:)