the dart zone max tomcat is quickly becoming many people's favorite blaster of 2022
and i'm starting to understand why there's a lot to love about this blaster
but after a little bit of testing i think there are a couple things for me at least
that keep this from just becoming an s-tier blaster let's talk about those
hello everyone my name is brett and sometimes i wear a beret i have quite a few dart zone
blasters that i have received from dart zone for the purposes of reviews i have been sitting on
them for some time because i've really wanted to test all of them to give you my honest feedback as
to whether these blasters are worth your money because quite a few of them are quite pricey
so that includes the mark 1.2 the mark 2.1 the max dictator the vulcanator and of course today's
subject the tomcat which comes in this beautiful beautiful box includes one tomcat ultimate super
drum dart blaster one detachable muzzle break one adjustable tactical stock one eyewear gear one
super drum two tactical sights 50 max accurate half length darts and one stock rest i guess
that's technically true but yes the stock is two different pieces so of course starting with the
fun stuff you do in fact get eyewear included with the tomcat any 14 plus blaster from nerf
or dart zone is including eyewear which i think is the right thing to do now this is being sold
separately for 10 united states dollars which is quite pricey it does have some rubber inserts
for your nose no they don't go in your nose but your nose can rest on them see it's beautiful high
quality stuff right there and on both sides you can see it says dart zone max so they're slightly
specialized glasses but they're nothing too fancy i mean they fit me just fine it's better eyewear
than nothing though there's a lot of reflection and with lights on right now wow it is um it is
an experience would these protect my eyes probably although a little bit of text actually right here
what does that say 2022 prime time toys made in china warning this is not a protective device
then what are you but enough of the eyewear let's talk about the tomcat itself starting from the
back this stock is quite different than any other stock dart zone has released before as described
on the box this piece on the top is removable but it's also meant to be adjustable so if you
are resting your cheek on it you can move it far back or far forward this is an n-strike style
stock attachment point and while that is great for attaching other stalks when it comes to this one
it's a bit wobbly because on the other side when it comes to adjusting the length of it
that piece is pretty darn sturdy i'm not usually one to have this in the fully
extended position i haven't been able to you know collapse it on my shoulder which is good but you
can see there's a little bit of flex there right not ideal and the flex is coming from
this point you really got to pinch this piece to actually adjust it yet taking off the stock
itself is super super simple so i kind of wish that was a little tighter retention
but it's not the end of the world it's just something to note but what i should really
start with is the overall look of this blaster when people first saw that this is what the tomcat
looked like i think there were some mixed opinions i will say i think this looks pretty darn sweet
and i like the aesthetic they went with with the tomcat the overall paint scheme here is very
simple or should i say non-existent it's just the plastic a couple different colors you've got the
red obviously and you've got gray and then you've got orange let me know if i missed a color there
because i don't think i did and i do kind of like the blockiness of it there's something very unique
about that and i don't know for some people they don't like it for me i think it's totally fine
even with the drum on this blaster i think there's a cool aesthetic to that now the sights are um
also kind of different every dart zone blaster seems to come out with different sights and
as far as this one goes it's not bad i just uh been trying to figure out how to best use
sites like this because in the back four little snake prongs which i guess you can kind of align
a dot to in the center the only time you would actually use them is if you are fully leaning
against the blaster aiming down the sight with your you know cheek on that cheek rest
and personally after my usage i haven't used the blaster like that almost ever so you can of course
just take them off if you don't care about them and you can put other sights on here if you want
you could take the stock off too which will just make it fit into frame a little bit easier has
also described the muzzle break is removable you could obviously put this on other dart zone style
blasters that accept it like the nexus like the striker like the dictator they all pretty
much take the same kind of barrel here but of course as you can see this one is very much meant
to mesh with the tomcat style so putting this on another blaster might be kind of weird but
at the same time you could take other style ones like this one is from the dictator sure
if you like that aesthetic great or you can just freaking leave it off or you could go
ahead and put yourself a little worker barrel on there for some improved accuracy so in its
simplest form this is the tomcat it's a pump action spring-powered blaster that is of course
being fed using this drum this cylinder drum i'm going to use the phrase interchangeably probably
don't sue me i don't know which is correct you can debate in the comment section down below now
this drum is going to make or break the blaster for you we'll talk about the other things that
people have done later but for what the dart zone tomcat is offering initially this thing is pretty
darn interesting this is a 50 round capacity half dart drum now you can load two into each slot
so it's double stacked which means there are 25 slots times two as you can see by my quick
removal this drum is designed to be removable from the tomcat now would you want to do that on the
field or just in between rounds that's more up to you but it does slap in pretty darn easily you do
have to make sure though that the front and the back these pins are fully extended when you are
going to put it back in normally it's not too much of an issue you do also have to make sure you're
primed back bye-bye because if you're just grabbing the cylinder really quickly and trying
to reload it there's a good chance that those tabs are not fully extended meaning you do have
to fiddle with them a little bit just to make sure that you're going to slap into place also you have
to make sure that it's facing the correct way but when it does go into place you'll hear a pretty
clear snap and you're ready to go and likewise you just pull it right out just friction fit to
release it now 50 rounds is quite the capacity and if you're just playing for a round running
around for like five minutes there's a good chance you won't even go through that many darts which is
great that means you won't even have to think about reloading this because reloading this
is where the drum kind of starts to run into issues on the plus side these holes are absolutely
perfect for rear loading and even when it's on the blaster not just attached like this reloading the
tomcat in its bottom 25 slots is the best thing you can ever do and it makes this blaster really
really easy to top off when you're running on the field meaning that you can very easily take
this plaster out have a pocket full of darts and just reload as you need to now the instructions
would say that you are supposed to load the darts from the top they do say you can reload from these
holes in the back but they also say that what you can do is reload from the top where you just push
the dirt in like that and then push it into place now that's all fine and good until you get to
the top because the bottom 25 are very very easy to load while the top are a bit more cumbersome
now this does take inspiration from their previous drum fed blaster which was the tomahawk but that
one was full length darts and you did have to bend those darts in order to make them fit not ideal
but you know full-length darts they'll they'll come back right well this one it wants you to bend
half-length darts and that's exactly what it says in the instructions i don't like that i don't like
that one bit they're saying you have to put it in like this and then like what push it through
that's one thing or push it in and then bend the dart and then bam ah beautiful i do want to keep
these intact as much as possible when feeding it through this breech system on the tomcat
it's the best way that these darts will actually be accurate if they get stepped on later that's
their own thing but i really don't want to be bending my darts prematurely and half darts well
when you're bending a half dart that's the entire dart so if you want to know the cumbersome loading
technique that i've already used on my tomcat here you go here's one dart loaded and i need to put
one on the top but i'm not going to i'm going to use my finger and push it up out of the way
actually i'll flip it over and it'll be easier and then i'm going to shove this dart in underneath
now was that the fastest process out there especially when loaded into the blaster absolutely
not but this is my channel this is my life this is my reloading technique darn it so no the reloading
on this blaster isn't terrible but when the bottom 25 are so easy and then the top are like
maybe i don't really want to do that right now and in dart zones defense when this cylinder
is fully loaded up those darts aren't going anywhere they stay in place very nicely and
there's no springs that are pushing on them or pushing against other darts so you can leave
this fully loaded up and bring it out at your next game they aren't deforming the darts when
they're actually just sitting in here so i think that is a plus side of the cylinder of course the
balance of loading versus storage i don't know your opinions may vary slap it in there so now
we're fully loaded and you can see in the primed back position when you do pull back just a little
bit you do rotate through that cylinder likewise if you do start shaking it a little bit you can
start to skip ahead it doesn't go backwards but it will you know very easily move forward
especially if the drum starts to get a little bit more empty it's pretty easy to rotate back
if needed and we are talking about 50 rounds of capacity so there's a good chance that you're
still going to have one dart next so let's prime it forward and let's give it a few test shots
you know what maybe we're not gonna shoot it in here this thing is quite loud
and that's not too surprising because it's offering some pretty serious performance
the tomcat comes in with you know their included darts with some other similar darts from dart zone
or worker in the upper 160 fps maybe 170s if you're using some of the bamboo darts that are
a lot lighter but typically you can expect 160fps from this blaster or up now that is some serious
firepower and you'll notice very quickly the prime is quite stiff on this blaster i've handled quite
a few dart zone blasters up to this point and yes some of them have stronger primes than others
the tomcat is not messing around it very clearly marks itself as a blaster meant for ages 14 and up
i am not the strongest man alive this should shock you i know but i'm also not going to consider
myself super super weak i mean i'm an adult i can do a push-up maybe even a pull-up but this prime
i was not expecting it to be as strong as it is in fact when i first was testing this blaster i hurt
my arm a little bit because i chickened winged too much i like flexed my arm in the wrong way
and i was like ooh that did not feel good at all so it did take me a little bit of time to
sort of learn how to use this blaster without hurting myself i'm simply saying that because
i think it's worth noting you might need to learn how to use a tomcat blaster
in a different way it's not the biggest cylinder ever but it does take quite a bit
of real estate where your arm might typically go if you just have a magazine
going straight down you're not going to run into something like that but with a tomcat there's a
lot of force that you've got to prime back and if you chicken wing too hard you might find a way to
uncomfortably prime this and 50 rounds of capacity you're probably going to be wanting to fire this
blaster quite a bit it also has slam fire which means if you're trying to prime this really fast
it's going to start to grate on you if you told me i had to use the tomcat blaster all day i'd
be like oh boy hopefully i'm not gonna die so what i have found is that keeping this stock on is the
best for me priming this into my shoulder really does make a difference so i don't over extend even
so i have found many scenarios where i do need to prime the blaster kind of like towards the side
because i'm hiding behind cover and i don't want to be all out in the open or maybe you know i'm
firing it from a lower position you might be super strong you might think i'm the weakest man alive
and that's totally fine if you haven't had that problem great but i've noticed it and the weirdest
thing too is that while i did find this pump grip to be relatively comfortable my hand fits just
fine on the grip and my hand fits just fine on the pump grip i don't use the pump grip as advertised
i hold it like this i hold my hand at the very very top of the pump grip and that's how i
operate this plaster sorry if that came across as a rant that wasn't my intention it's just my
first experience with this blaster wasn't very positive because of a weird priming and then it
just kind of hurt my arm and i was like whoa what did i do wrong and then i learned kind of how to
use this blaster and it got a lot better because when i started using this blaster it was a lot
of fun and the accuracy wasn't half bad either slam fire can be a little bit janky i will admit
well that was jank attack perhaps the optimal way would be to actually use the shoulder stock
and then you know slowly fire it and when you do slowly fire it you are going to get
better performance as in you're not going to skip rounds as frequently
because sometimes when using this blaster you will skip rounds and you'll notice that
especially if you're on your last 25 if you've actually fired evenly well if you miss a round
then you're firing a blank and it's going to be very loud and no dart is going to fire
how about this blaster has a lot of capacity so the drum does make missing a shot a little
more forgivable it's still not ideal though and i did run into some issues where i was firing this
blaster and i realized i'd skipped some shots and i was like why isn't it rotating it comes
when you fire the blaster a little bit faster and yes you do want to make sure that the blaster does
go all the way back when you prime it so that you do rotate that cylinder i've also had a few times
where it gets locked up in the front like i fire the blaster and it's like kind of locked up here
and i'm like what the heck is going on i pull the trigger a few times and then prime it back again
and it works i don't know what that's all about if you've had a similar experience let me know
sometimes it would seem to do that when i like reload a cylinder and it's stuck in the backward
position and i don't really know what that's all about either but with all my little gripes being
said i have to admit i've had a lot of fun using the tomcat even in some competitive practice again
not having to reload hopefully during a round means this thing's gonna keep me well supplied
because right now this blaster comes in at 70 united states dollars which is quite pricey
but in thinking about other blasters that even dart zone has released up to this point
i suppose it's actually not too surprising i mean the nexus costs 50 bucks and if you use that as
a baseline this has more capacity it's a higher performer throw in some inflation of course there
too what if perhaps in a world where modders exist what if we made this thing magazine fed just for
the heck of it i mean sure the whole point of this cylinder is the you know uniqueness of the tomcat
but it's already been done bobo innovation you absolute mad lad the same person who made the lame
boy which is right here on my wall bobo innovation made a removable half dart adapter for talons half
length magazines in the tomcat basically making this blaster function in a way it was not designed
to do and it's so easy to install and then remove you can go back to using the cylinders oh
it's absolutely beautiful hats off to you metaphorically beret tip to you also if
you're doing that you're not going to have the cylinder in the way so if you're looking to have
reloading um as a magazine option then i guess there's something for you if you like the
silhouette and you like the power of the tomcat as it is but of course if you just like cylinders
guess what they're also going to be releasing some additional ones for the tomcat from dart
zone officially looks like they're going to be 20-ish dollars so that also might not be
super desirable for some people but i think that answers something that many were going to ask can
i get more cylinders for this blaster all in all the tomcat is pretty cool and if you've already
gotten yourself a tomcat or are considering this blaster i'd love to hear your thoughts in
the comment section down below thank you everyone so much for watching subscribe for more dart zone
cat blasters i have no idea why they called it the tomcat but i guess we have no idea why they call
any blast or what they do and thank you again to dartzone for sending me this blaster this
one is a ton of fun to play with and i will see you next time well with more cat blasters
just kidding there are no cat blasters