Captain America: The Winter Soldier Stealthfire Shield Review

While many in the NIC have been finding soft releases of the Mega Magnus, I found a different item! The promotional blaster for the upcoming Captain America sequel was on the shelves at ToysRUs, wating for someone to investigate. Even if these things are usually gimmicks, why not take a peek? The disc launcher from the first movie's toy line was fun, if nothing else.

Twenty feet is a disappointing claim, though.

The back of the box:

The helmet increases ranges by 10 feet, obviously.

See more after the jump!

Out of the box, we find that the blaster is, in terms of size, roughly equivalent to the old Nerf Manta Rays. The handle and wrist strap, however, are similar to its Marvel disc-shooting predecessors.

Psh, who waits to open the box until they get home, anyway?

At the rear of the blaster is a flap you life in order to load the darts (which should be noted to seem inferior in quality to normal Elite darts, at least in terms of foam). The handle for deploying the barrels is also in the rear.

You're loading the darts the wrong direction!...

...oh wait.

Notice the barrels don't exactly line up straight. It is unknown whether all shields do this, or if I just got an unlucky break.

So, how does this thing work? After extending the barrels, pulling the trigger fires the darts one at a time. Pulling the trigger a fifth time makes the shield fold up again - this explains the resistance felt when pulling the rear handle. But if the rear handle isn't the priming mechanism...then the trigger is!

It turns out that, in function, this blaster is the bastard love child of the Snapfire 8 and the Triad. I was only able to pry open part of the shell for a peek, but I can confirm that the Snapfire 8's extension spring-powered plunger is inside. So why the poor ranges?

Turns out that in order to make everything work in such a small package, sacrifices had to be made. Namely, there is tubing running between the plunger and the two barrel assemblies. Anyone familiar with Buzz Bee's various "rifles" knows how their plunger and tubing setup kills ranges. Further disassembly will be needed to fully assess the state of the internals, but it's not looking good.

Seems to me it would've been better to just leave out the shield's gimmicks and use the handle and interior space to house Manta Ray internals. Or at least two Elite plungers, so that you could keep the barrel setup and fire two darts at a time, in the same fashion as the Rough Cut.