Iron Man Stark Strike Review

Among the many new licensed products for the upcoming Captain America: Civil War is the Iron Man Stark Strike gauntlet. If you want to look at the internals, then by all means continue. Just know that unless you plan on scrapping the internals for something that actually works, you're simply wasting your money.

The Stark Strike straps to your wrist, and is in fact primed when in its recessed position. I recommend having the blaster popped out if you plan on not using it for a lengthy period of time.

There are two buttons on the back of the gauntlet.

The bottom button releases the firing pod from its base, and moves the barrel forward. I'm using the term barrel very loosely, because it's more like a dart holder. You'll see why in a moment.

The second button fires the blaster.

When you open up the bottom of the blaster, you can see the two springs that pop up the firing pod. That large white plastic piece holds the pod down until you release it.

Take apart the next set of screws, and you see the spring, plunger, and dart holder. Notice I didn't say plunger tube.

On closer inspection, you can see that this blaster uses a pusher system.

The "plunger" doesn't seal against anything. It and its container simply hit the dart at the end of travel to propel it.

Finally, you can see the numerous safeties packed into this blaster.

Performance is terrible, often failing to land five feet in front of you. Thanks to the loose dart holder that shoots forward a bit when the pod pops up, the dart tends to pop out enough to disengage the safeties. When this happens, the gauntlet won't even fire. Quite frankly, this is one of the worst dart blasters I've ever tested, if not THE worst.