In this edition of Blaster Chat, Bryon and Branon discuss how Dart Zone® is changing the game of gel blasting with its new gel bead blasters. What are gel bead blasters? The short answer is that they’re similar to foam dart blasters, but they shoot gel beads – also sometimes referred to as gel balls or water beads – made from water-absorbing polymer. The team at Dart Zone® has gotten in on the fun by introducing the Gel Zone Pro® brand into the world of gel blasters. Gel Zone Pro® offers two lines of water bead blasters: the eponymous Gel Zone Pro® blasters and the Hydro Strike blasters. This video focuses on the latest Hydro Strike bead blasters: the Stratus Pro, Nova Pro and Pulsar Pro.
First, Bryan and Branon provide insights into the differences in play patterns between foam dart blasters and gel bead blasters, and the different experiences they offer. Then, they introduce you to the Stratos Pro, the Nova Pro and the Pulsar Pro. Learn about their features, accessories and specifications, including some cool glow-in-the-dark features. You’ll also learn about how you can mix and match gel bead blaster accessories to customize your gameplay.
Subscribe to the Blaster Chat podcast to stay on top of the latest developments in gel bead blasters and dart blasters. You can also check out more videos on our website or the Dart Zone® YouTube channel. Be sure to contact the team with questions or topics you’d like to see discussed.
- Gel Bead Play Pattern: 3:20
- Hydro Strike Stratos Pro Gel Bead Blaster: 8:43
- Hydro Strike Nova Pro Gel Bead Blaster: 12:42
- Hydro Strike Pulsar Pro Gel Bead Blaster: 19:02
Transcript
Bryan:
Hey, welcome back to Blaster Chat. I’m Bryan here with Dart Zone®, with my best friend in the industry right now. We’ve got this new series going here, it’s going strong. Branon, how are you doing today, man?
Branon:
Man, I’m great. How are you doing?
Bryan:
I’m doing good. I think we’ve got a cool episode here, it’s a little departure from the normal discussions. We’ve been hitting everybody hard on dart blasters, our half-length darts, Dart Zone Pro®, Dart Zone Max®. What do we got today?
Branon:
Well, it is called Blaster Chat, so we decided we’d go ahead and talk a little bit about some of our other blasters. I don’t know if you guys know this, but we do dart blasters, we do water blasters. We, as a company, Prime Time Toys, we actually also do gel bead blasters. We’ve been doing that for a couple of years, and it’s been a fun adventure. We’ve got some new stuff to talk about today.
But we’ve seen, especially in our dart community, a lot of people asking questions. I know that there’s not necessarily always an overlap. If you play with darts, you don’t necessarily play with gel bead. If you play with gel bead, you don’t necessarily play with darts. Some people meet in the middle. But we really want to talk a little bit about our thought process, talk about how we got into this, and kind of who we are in a sea of other people.
Bryan:
I think the category of gel bead blasters, water bead blasters, whatever you want to call it, has come up pretty quickly. I would say that we first saw the product entering the market summer of 2021, and then 2022 was when we introduced our Hydro Strike line at Walmart, which is exclusive to Walmart, and that’s been going strong in there. The difference is that… At Walmart it’s sold in sporting goods, it’s not in the toy department aisle. For those who are not familiar with this product line before, it’s called Hydro Strike. We have two items currently in the market, one’s called the Pulsar Pro, and the other one is called the Nebula Pro. We’ll put a little image up here in the podcast for those who want to reference those. But today we’re kind of talking about new stuff, and we got a lot of new so…
Branon:
We do.
Bryan:
We think that the category is a growing category. I think it’s a lot of people trying to come in and expand on what the others are doing. Again, I think that comes back to with the toy industry is that product is king, design is king, and being a toy first and foremost is king. I think we’ve got a lot of cool things here to show.
What’s your thoughts on the category? How do you feel about this category. I get asked a lot, “Well, I’m not into that. I’m only into dart blasters. Why should I be into gel blasters?” I think it’s basically, if it’s cool and it’s fun, you’re thinking you can gravitate towards it. What do you think about the category? How does it percolate and keep in your mind between the two kind of core demographics?
Branon:
Yeah. I think that in general, play pattern is quite similar. I think that there were people that historically did paintball when they were younger, and even maybe just have experimented with paintball and then transitioned to darts. There are people that are hardcore airsoft, but have also transitioned around. I think that, for me personally as just a player, I kind of gravitate toward all of them, I think that I tend to just get really excited at all of them. I mean, functionally, very, very similar play pattern. You have a blaster, you aim at somebody, you blast at them, right?
Bryan:
Yeah, and they get a laugh and there’s not cries.
Branon:
Exactly. I think that for us, yes, we are in this sporting goods section. However, what you’ll notice about… You just talked about product is king, design is king, we are Prime Time Toys, that’s a very important word. If we were going to enter the market, which we did, if we were going to enter the market, we felt that it was extremely important that these felt like toys because they do shoot harder than a dart blaster. It’s a smaller projectile, smaller ammo type. But I think that I’m just having a ton of fun with some of the innovation that’s coming into it. I think that at the very beginning, the innovation was kind of slow to start, and I think that we’re starting to see a lot more kind of collectively.
Especially with what we teased out in the last video, one of the last podcasts, our Stratos, which we’re going to talk about again today, that one is something that we feel is really an innovator in the category at this point and gets us really excited because I think that the, same with darts, you guys have seen in the past with us with darts, we really like a mechanism, we really like a fun gimmick… Gimmick sounds like a bad word, it’s not. We love a fun playful take on something that’s seemingly simple.
Bryan:
Yeah, I think it’s basically a non-intimidating homage to something that you may see in a video game.
Branon:
Yeah, I think that’s a really good way to put it.
Bryan:
I think gel blasters for me… I remember the first call we got from a Walmart team, a little background, we’re doing so well with the development of Adventure Force blasters and kind of leading that product line, there was really not much product to fill the demand of gel blasters or gel bead blasters or water bead blasters. One of the things that came very quick out of that was the buyers were just like, “Can you get me product? How fast can you get it to me?” Because you know what? It’s an untapped market and we’ll see what happens. Now there’s going to be a four-foot section and an eight-foot section in most local Walmart’s, and then Target’s putting the gel bead blasters into their toy department aisle. I think it’s kind of where, on a lifecycle, it hasn’t replaced Rival completely, but it’s basically the impact what Rival rounds or ball blasters were for the market a couple of years ago. It’s a little bit disruptive and it will have a peak and then we’ll see where it goes.
Then after that, it’s another ammo type in the category. Ammo types I think are always what breed innovation in the category. Before it was the full length standard length darts, then the waffle tip darts became the industry standard from us, and then you got into ball blasters, the rounds, and half-length darts. I think ammo continues to be a platform for people to innovate on, and I think we’re here ready to show. We’ve been babbling along a little bit about just state of the gel bead blaster industry. Let’s get to showing some product.
Branon:
Yeah. Honestly guys, I know these podcasts, they kind of go all over the place. Sometimes they’re product demos, sometimes it’s very spec heavy, sometimes it’s very history heavy. As we continue to kind of expand upon this, let us know. You know what I mean? We want to know, we want to make something that’s… We get excited about stuff that the normal person on the street probably would fall asleep listening to some days, we try really hard not to put that in the podcast, but if you start to get to a place where you’re like, “Guys, we really want to know more about this,” let us know.
Bryan:
Yeah. It’s our show, we could do whatever we want.
Branon:
That’s true.
Bryan:
Part of this is just you… I think you are our co-host on the other side of the camera, you give us feedback and direction and we’ll incorporate it into future episodes. We appreciate all the support that’s been started.
Branon:
Yeah, man. Well here, I’m actually going to hand this one off to you.
Bryan:
I’ll hold it, I’ll be the Vanna White as we talk.
Branon:
Yeah, so… Oh, you’ve got a nice little slow 360 spin. I like it.
Bryan:
Yeah.
Branon:
Well, yeah, so we’ve got the Stratos. The Stratos is the one that really had us the most excited for this season. If you know about the Pulsar Pro, which has kind of this fun tie-dye, obviously we continue to lean on toy, toy, toy.
Bryan:
Yeah, it’s right here. This is a pattern that we’ve kind of… I think it’s synonymous with Hydro Strike Now, which is basically tie-dye, very colorful graphics, very bright, designed to be fun, but also safety oriented.
Branon:
I know orange is your typical safety color, but I think that tie-dye, no one’s going to mistake it, right?
Bryan:
Yeah.
Branon:
Yes, Stratos, let’s just go ahead and a couple of quick things so you know what you’re getting. When it comes to the Stratos… I’ve actually got boxes here, so I’m just going to tell you. You’re going to get 10,000 of the glow-in-the-dark rounds, which we’ll double back on the glow-in-the-dark rounds and kind of what that means for you guys. But the actual drum that holds the actual gel beads, that is going to hold 1200 of the rounds and it’s actually going to fire 10 per second. This is our fastest, our strongest blaster that is on the market, and also our most playful. It ends up being fastest, strongest, and most playful.
Bryan:
Yeah, right here in the top here is your battery door, so it’s powered by a 2S Lipo, it’s the same battery that’s shipped and sold with the Pulsar Pro. All of our battery operated blasters use that same battery type, so it allows you to have extra batteries really easily, and then the barrel will rotate super-fast when you fire up your rev trigger. Then of course when you want to pew, pew, pew on steroids, you go and just pull the trigger and you’re going to get 10 rounds a second. We’ve done this in a studio with the lights turned off and it looks like just a glowing yellow beam.
Branon:
Oh yeah, it’s like a laser beam, they’re coming out so fast.
Bryan:
It’s like a laser beam. It basically looks like it could be a Star Wars weapon. It’s a true blaster.
Branon:
Yeah. I think 10 rounds per second is the official magic number for laser beam style stuff when the lights are turned out. With that glow-in-the-dark stuff, what’s kind of important here, what we think is extremely cool with this is that the actual drum itself has an LED in it, which means that the blaster is not glow-in-the-dark, the beads are glow-in-the-dark and the actual magazine is glow-in-the-dark.
Bryan:
Yeah, we’ll show you here. I’m not sure if you’re going to get a great view of this, but we will go into that. There’s your light source, your LED is right here at the top of your mag-well, and actually when the rounds are fed from the bottom of your hopper up into the blaster, they’re activated and it allows them to be glow-in-the-dark. This of course is compatible with non-glow-in-the-dark ammo that’s traditional.
Branon:
Yeah, absolutely.
Bryan:
But the unique thing about this, because this attachment is universal, this drum is now functional in your Pulsar Pro.
Branon:
Yes, which means that you have your Pulsar Pro magazines, which are really great, but your Pulsar Pro now officially is a glow-in-the-dark Pulsar Pro.
Bryan:
Yes.
Branon:
Which is really cool.
Bryan:
Fully functional.
Branon:
Yep, fully functional, glow-in-the-dark.
Bryan:
By the time this podcast comes out, we hope that… I’m sorry, I moved away from the mic there. By the time this podcast comes out, we hope this is available for purchase on walmart.com and then you’ll be able to pick it up in stores a little bit later in the year around mid-September.
Branon:
Yeah. Look, let’s just keep this thing rolling because we’ve got four SKUs to talk about today, guys.
Bryan:
Yep. We’re talking about Walmart, new enters to Walmart first under the Hydro Strike line. After you get to the Stratos, what do you got next?
Branon:
All right, so yeah, next we’ve actually got the Nova, which is super sick. I really like this one a lot because it’s got an internal hopper, so you just kind of open it up, dump your stuff right in there, but the same kind of glow-in-the-dark LED setup is actually at the bottom of the hopper. This is kind of an all enclosed situation, it’s a full auto blaster, it’s doing seven beads per second, and I think it holds right around 500, but it’s also got a Picatinny rail at the top. The Picatinny rail I think is where we start to land on what we find really exciting about the crossover in that Venn diagram. What you’ll notice is with the Pulsar Pro, you’ve got the Picatinny rail and you have the stock attachment. With this, you’ve got the Picatinny rail. Realistically, if you play with darts, you may not play with gel. If you play with gel, you may not play with darts. However, for those that do, when you buy our blasters as you’re buying and collecting different stock attachments, different sites, you will find that you’ll be able to use those across category.
Bryan:
I don’t think other competitors are using the Picatinny rail system universally on their design, so I think it’s one thing that… Working with Hydro Strike and their other brand called Gel Zone Pro®, it’s going to be designed by Dart Blaster specialists for the gel bead blaster category. Those key elements will not be ignored or brought over because people like to accessorize if not able to modify their blasters.
Branon:
Yeah, so you’re going to see… You guys have already seen the new offerings for darts this year, which means you’ve got new stocks, same attachments, new sites, same Picatinny rail, so we’ve got that here. Then it’s actually got your safety and your fire switch are actually on both sides, so we’ve got a full ambidextrous set of triggers. Then, that’s it. You’re actually going to get, what is it, 5,000 of the glow-in-the-dark rounds. However, you can use this without glow-in-the-dark rounds. It’s a super sick blaster. I’m really excited. It’s kind of a smaller profile but a little bit bigger than the Nebula, so it’s kind of that middle ground.
Bryan:
We have different types of eyewear that are included in each set. We have some, say, standard safety glasses, and then also you’ve got the deluxe eyewear that comes with the Pulsar Pro and also with the Stratus. It fits right over your glasses, so it allows you to play if you wear eyewear or not. This fits very nice and comfortable, it’s got this padding that kind of gives you some flexibility to whatever shape of your face is. This is included. I mean picking this up, this is impact rated, so this is basically designed for competition blasting. If you pick this up, it’s probably a $20 value right here right inside the box.
Branon:
Yeah, and that’s in the Stratos and the Pulsar.
Bryan:
Correct.
Branon:
Yeah, and in the Nova you’ve got your normal safety glasses.
Bryan:
Correct.
Branon:
Yeah. Do you want to show them something new?
Bryan:
Yeah, just an accessory. This is kind of building off our other tactical gear competition masks that we’ve done before for Dart Blasters. We’ve upgraded one that kind of has its own face shield that is really designed for gel bead blasters where it gives you the breathability, fits over your glasses as the main pull point, but also blocks any type of particles of hitting your face. This is…
Branon:
Yeah, because it’s got the cross pieces of plastic.
Bryan:
Correct. From the back area you can kind of see how it all…
Branon:
Yeah, under each one of those slots.
Bryan:
Kind of creates a vent without being an opening for things to pass through. This is a new pattern and a new design that we’ve actually… I believe that it’s got some patentability to it and we’re excited to see that. This is going to be a $10 option if you wanted to pick it up at Walmart. If you want a deluxe pair of goggles, you can get it with the blaster. But if you’re a player and just want to have a loner set, get you a mask to go with it. There’s not that accessory out there in the market too, so it’ll be the first blaster company bringing out protective eyewear as an accessory for gel beads.
Branon:
Okay, so we’ve got one more. That’s kind of what’s happening at Walmart, and Walmart is kind what started this for us. However, Gel Zone Pro®, that is our other line. You might be wondering why are there two lines? Well, it’s because we wanted to make brands exclusive for Walmart and exclusive for Target.
Bryan:
We think that’s very important for supporting our retail partners. We talk shop here a little bit too much, maybe, we’re just [inaudible 00:17:46], but from a product company standpoint and an opportunity is that retailers are just like anybody, they want to be treated special just like you want to be treated special. We’re doing the best we can to bring out exclusive items, and it also gives us an opportunity to bring more product to you. If you like, say, the Pulsar, you’re not going to see it everywhere, you know where to go buy it, and you buy it at Walmart and you become a primary shopper there. That’s been our bread and butter between Adventure Force, Dart Zone®, and Dart Zone Pro® along the line. I think it’s a unique asset to us and it makes us a different type of competitor in this market.
Branon:
Absolutely. That’s actually a really solid segue because if you liked the Hydrax, which is a Gel Zone Pro® product, then you probably will notice that it’s quite similar to the Nova. We’re sharing kind of silhouettes and similar functionality, but you get a new blaster, which is really awesome when you talk about the Pulsar because… There we go, because we’ve actually taken what you love about the Pulsar, so we’ve got a similar silhouette, and like we talked about before, full Picatinny rail, we’ve got that same stock attachment right here, and you’ve got your select fire, so your single and your full auto like we’ve had for the Pulsar, but with the added benefit of this also has the LED in it.
Bryan:
Yeah, so the magazine’s been upgraded to be an LED light-up functionality. These things come in cycles.
Branon:
Absolutely.
Bryan:
You can innovate, iterate on successful platforms. The Pulsar Pro has been very successful. Anybody who’s bought that, who has had a chance to play with it, it feels like a high-end dart blaster.
Branon:
Yes.
Bryan:
This is just another iteration of it. It’s going to be a little bit lower retail, it’s going to be about MSRP of $70, $69 depending upon the final price point. But I think it gives you something else to look at and you get the light-up function with it, which I think is a nice upgrade for those who are looking to add to their assortment.
Branon:
Yeah, and just to kind of put our money where our mouth is, can you go ahead and hand me that Stratos?
Bryan:
Yeah.
Branon:
Which is a Hydro Strike Stratos magazine, they may be different brands, but we’ll go ahead and prove that one out. Then while you have the Stratos, Bryan, here you go, here is the Kratos magazine. When you’re buying these different gel magazines, just know that you’ll be able to use these with your different blasters, be it Gel Zone Pro® or Hydro Strike.
Bryan:
Correct.
Branon:
You can take your Kratos or your Pulsar and turn it into a drum blaster, you could take your Stratos and turn it into a magazine blaster. We think it’s extremely important across a lot of our platforms to make sure that compatibility is key.
Bryan:
Yeah. Compatibility of ammo types, compatibility of magazines, stock balance, it’s just an endless desire for that. Wherever you can do it, small… At the point in time, it may feel small in the grand scheme of things, it does add up down the line, so when you’re getting to your fourth version of an item or fourth, it’s still going to be backwards compatible. From going back to my PlayStation days, I love the fact that most games were backward compatible with new platforms.
Branon:
Absolutely.
Bryan:
That’s something I think that we want to take and continue in products for gel bead blasters and dart blasters.
Branon:
Yeah. Now I know some of you might be like, “Well, it’s not exactly the case with your magazines and some things you got to iterate.”
Bryan:
We learn. You know what? We’re newcomers, so we’re not making those mistakes or those overlooks. We have corrected those and continue to innovate. If you give us the benefit of the doubt, we get there. That’s the whole part. Part of this is the journey with us to iterate, and you guys know so much more about this stuff than we do. Even though that we kind of can be viewed as experts, you, our audience, it’s always educating us on something. I’m learning something daily from the audience. You don’t think you can learn something new, but there’s opportunity to continue to learn.
Branon:
Yeah, I think that you couldn’t have said it any better, man.
Bryan:
Be curious, man.
Branon:
Well, cool. Yeah, so we’re going to go ahead and start wrapping this thing up.
Bryan:
Yeah, I think it’s been great. I think we got a lot to show here and we got more podcasts coming up. I think we’re in a cycle where podcasts are going to be talking about new product and what’s coming into the market. We may have more details about future events coming up to clarify. But again, in the comment section, if you’d love us to talk about any particular topic in depth, send us a note, follow us on Instagram and also on YouTube. Send us a note in as many different ways as possible, we’ll make sure that it gets on our to-do list.
Branon:
Yeah. The only other note, this is Blaster Chat, which means we’re going to talk about all things blasters including Blaster Bash. Just a quick note, I’m sure you guys already saw, but it was postponed due to weather. We’re working on getting everything…
Bryan:
Yeah, the weather was forecasted pretty heavily and we feel bad for the people in Colorado Springs, there were some flooding for that afternoon.
Branon:
Yeah, it was rough.
Bryan:
I’m glad we were able to make those adjustments in time. Then we got more details coming… I mean, I guess you’re working on it more than I am, but what’s the…?
Branon:
Yeah, so right now we’re looking at August 11th since things are still kind of shifting around and moving, and we’ll make sure that we are communicating that with everybody, but the new date tentatively at this point looks like August 11th. It should be pretty close to set in stone, but I don’t want to make any hard promises about specific details. All you should know is it was postponed due to weather, we’re really excited for everything, kind of it coming back. It was not canceled, just kind of moved around. But if you guys have any questions about that, if you want to know more about gel bead as a category or anything specific or have some cool ideas for what you’d like to see in the category, I think what you’d like to see in the category is something we’re really interested in, let us know.
If you have other things that you’d like to know on the podcast, just to go ahead and drop a comment, we are reading them, we are appreciating them. Like we’ve said before that comment section is open and we are definitely sharing your feedback to the entire team.
Bryan:
Yep. It’s fun reading.
Branon:
It sure is.
Bryan:
Keep up the good work. I think we’ve done our due diligence on all the blasters today. We’ll put some links in the link below about our product pages so you can find more information. But we’re excited about the launch and we’ll get back at it very soon. Again, this is Blaster Chat. I’m Bryan with Dart Zone®.
Branon:
And I’m Branon.
Bryan:
That’s right.
B and B, we’ll be back. Talk to you soon. Thanks.
Branon:
Talk to you soon. Thanks guys.
Bryan:
Bye.
Branon:
Bye.
