[rating:3/5]
When you were in school, did you ever wish you could whack some kid on the other side of the lunch room with a spitball? Well, here’s your chance! I had the chance to get two of Jakks Pacific new Max Force line of kids guns, and the Shadow Hawk 100 is by far one of the most wicked looking guns I’ve played with. With claims of being able to reach distances of 100 feet, how well did it actually hold up though? Let’s find out more about one of the best toys games.
The first thing that made me go “WOW” when putting the Shadow Hawk 100 together, was the sheer massiveness of it. Designed to look and act like a bolt action sniper rifle, when fully assembled it a over three feet in length. That’s some serious hardware for a child to be hauling around! There is the gun mechanism, the butt stock, the barrel, and a “scope” (not really a scope, just plastic iron sights in a scope shaped housing). Attached to the barrel are two pieces of plastic, that swing down to become a bipod. I find them to be the absolute worst part of the design though – they’re flimsy, and just look cheap when compared to the nice design the rest of the gun sports. One of the best toys for kids below the ages of 4 and 8 years is described in our Leapfrog rockit twist handheld learning toys game system review.
Like the Xploderz gun I reviewed before and unlike Nerf guns, the Shadow Hawk has no trigger to pull. You first chamber the ammo via a bolt action system, and use something aiken to a pump action system to fire. Basically you pull back on the pump, and release it to shoot the bullet out at a target. When you pull the pump it builds up pressure, and then lets it go with a lot of force when you release. The bullets easily go 100 feet (I took it to a large field to test), with long shots hitting around the 120 mark. Also, read our Mesha electric inflator portable decoration balloon review for a portable balloon air pump that you can use to blow your birthday party balloons.
Now you may be wondering why I’m referring to the ammo as bullets, and well, that’s really what they look like. Tiny white bullets – in reality they’re basically only wads of paper shaped like bullets though. They react just like spitballs though; you run them under water for ten seconds to get them nice and wet, and then shoot them at someone or something resulting in a satisfying splat. The downside to the ammo though is that they’re obviously one shot only – after that they can’t be used again even if you missed. Also don’t think of using actual spitballs in it, because unless you can roll them into the exact shape, they won’t create a seal, and as such won’t be able to be fired.
The Shadow Hawk 100 is extremely accurate at distances of 50 and 75 feet, after 75 feet though the bullet drop effect is pretty severe. Any range closer than 30 feet SHOULD be avoided as much as possible though, because these things really sting that close. Jakks Pacific thankfully provides goggles with the guns (although they’re only kid sized) because I could see someone getting a severe eye injury from one of these.
A big downfall is the time it takes to load one of these though – the clip only holds eight shots before you need to either pop either dry pellets in and run them under water for ten seconds, or pop eight pre-wetted bullets in. Either way takes precious time, and that’s time that someone else will more than likely be pelting you. If used in a game like “Humans vs. Zombies” on a college campus however, the Shadow Hawk 100 would be great as a support weapon.
When all is said and done though, I have to give the Shadow Hawk 100 a rating of 3 stars out of 5.
Pros:
- Very accurate
- The long range is great for certain kinds of games
- The impact noise is satisfying, and never gets old
Cons:
- Single use ammo gets expensive quick
- Takes a long time to reload
- Bipod legs look cheap
You can grab Jakks Pacific’s Shadow Hawk 100 from Amazon for $49.99
