Review: Lazer Tag Phoenix LTX (revised)

(this was one of my first posts this time last year, but I decided to give it a bit more oomph, so here it is again.. but revised!)
Laser Tag in the home arena hasn't REALLY been able to regain its popularity in the domestic backyard market since its glory days of the mid 80's. In Australia, it's been pretty woeful; a handful of Toy Box Laser Challenge blasters dribbled in and out of stores and the dominance of Nerf foam blasters meant the new generation were disinterested and on a whole unaware of how cool laser tag really could be.

States-side, they had moderate success with the Lazer Tag brand being re-released with the LTTO line and then their successors, the very cool Phoenix LTX series of taggers. They were unfortunately never released in Australia, but that's nothing questionable decision making at 3AM in the morning and an open eBay window couldn't fix, so we managed to import several of them and to date are still, in our opinion, the best home tagging system around. Here's why:)

Light Strike: it's here! Well.. sort of. Attachments pics

 A stroll down my local Target had a dude stocking the shelves with the new Light Strike gear, ready for the upcoming toy sale for the 22nd. No blasters it seems which I thought was kinda dumb, although they HAVE been spotted in other Targets around the country (one of our readers even picked up a set- his initial responses here) but what's good to see is it sounds like the FULL kit is being released; the rifles AND pistols including all variants, all attachments and the vests and targets. To be honest I'll probably take a hit and purchase a few blasters at full price the moment they're available just so I can review them for you all, but otherwise it's worth waiting for a few weeks and getting them for cheaper...

This isn't like Nerf folks, sales are gonna be your friend if Light Strike is your bliss. If you think about it this way- a pistol rifle full price will be 79, each attachment goes for around 19 (so chances are you'll probably want at LEAST one, but probably all four), a vest (which is more than just more targets to shoot but a shield as well) is full price at 39.. Then you have batteries as well, you probably will want to pick up pistols too, and extra targets to set up a home arena experience. Realistically speaking, just for a ONE player kit, you're budgeting around 200 bucks.. Now you need a second set for when friends come around. And if you want real fun.. you'll want a team.. also not assuming you're a collector and need all three variants..

WowWee may be thinking they're pretty damn clever coming up with so much kit, but the big question is going to be whether our home market is really ripe to pay those sorts of prices for that kind of kit.  (you can get change from a hundred for two Longshots and a box of darts)


Anyway, enough about the costs! That's why I have a day job! More attachments pics after the jump.

YouTube - Gunfight in Austin, TX

Awesome:)

Nerf Whiteout Series: It's official...

"Official photos of the Nerf Whiteout series have now been posted. Keep checking this page for updates on international availability."

Yup, there you have it folks. Today Nerf finally released "official" photos of their Whiteout series on their Facebook page.

Hundreds of msgs and emails I've encountered from readers since JANUARY this year calling my images "fake" and "that's so obviously painted" can now.. well.. change their screen names or pretend their youTube accounts got 'hacked' by trollz:P

That being said.. it's interesting the 'tone' Nerf have used with their announcement...it's almost like reluctance more than anything else? Maybe their PR person is sick today..

Pocket Lint: Light Strike from WowWee: Laser Quest returns

Pocket Lint have a nice post today on the upcoming Lightstrike laser tag system; granted it's mostly rehash intel based around a PR release that you'll probably already know, BUT the post has some nice photos and does finally reveal the idea behind the design variants:

"The concept is simple. Three races represented by six guns with bolt on accessories to keep kids wanting to come back for more."


Light Strike from WowWee Laser Quest returns via Pocket Lint

Max Force Vigilante justice?:)

We've been receiving quite a number of emails lately from parents; thank you so much to our readers for taking the time to let us know your thoughts on the toy blaster world and how much you're liking our blog. A few days ago we received one that had me very very amused and I just had to share it with you; this one came from a mother who from our review had bought the Max Force Shadow Hawk for her son...

Dear Pocket and the Urban Taggers clan,

I wanted to write you letting you know I have been a very big fan of your blog for many months, and have taken much of your recommendations and advice on new "blasters" on the market for my kids. They are religious fans of Nerf, while my husband the big kid himself is always going on about the old super soakers he had as a teenager so it is a topic that brings us all together.

Something that I thought was very amusing happened to us last week and I thought I would share it with you even though I normally would not condone this type of behaviour! Suffice to say we've had no retaliation or repeat offences thus far so fingers crossed!

For months, our street has been experiencing considerable amounts of vandalism and graffiti between the walkway outside our house from neighbour hood drunk teen pranksters. It has been difficult to catch them in the act, but the other night we were so lucky as to spot two teenaged boys sitting by the side fence breaking glass bottles and "tagging" the electrical box. Joshua, my 13 year old son was the first to spot them and alerted my other boy Nick who is 16, and my husband Dan.

Now...Dan and I had just given Joshua a new Max Force Shadow Hawk based on your Urban Taggers review, for having fantastic grades at school.

Of course boys being boys Joshua originally went about using it to deal with our pigeon problem in our upstairs balcony but this time around, he decided with his brother and my husband that he would use it for something else. Apparently the vandal and his friend were making quite the ruckus and had been there for a good 5 minutes. Nick and my husband went on to lean out Joshua's bedroom window balcony and under the cover of darkness, proceeded to shoot the vandals (and the fence) with quite a degree of accuracy with the spitwad gun!!

My husband pointed out that due to the Max Force's high velocity firing functionality, the spit wads would just explode on impact but it made it very difficult for the vandals to know where the shots were coming from, let alone in the dark. Unlike Nerf darts, the ammunition was wet and could not be easily identified especially under darkness, and because the bullets were completely disposable so there was no need to retrieve anything afterwards. While it was completely harmless, there was enough of splat on impact to scare the bajeezus out of those ratbags.

My husband and boys came back down stairs quite satisfied with themselves and could not stop talking about it to me all evening. They have gone on to buy more clips and another Shadow Hawk and are interested in other guns in the Max Force line too. As long as it's not in the house, I don't mind!

Sincerely

Sarah J

Gear Up Raider CS-35..a real..box.

It's not that different from any other Raider box other than the obvious paint job. Main things here are the stuff on the right hand side- Gear up streamlines, and a bonus "kinda useless other than evoking interest" XLR disc for the new Vortex line:)

I know. We try to post as regularly as we can, but sometimes.. it's a slow week:)