Thursday, March 12, 2015

Shelf watch: Crossbolts, cheap Demolishers, lots of variety

There haven't been any shelf watch posts from me recently as stock has been moving very slowly over the last few months at the local Walmart - but, as of my visit earlier this week, there are several new things worth noting.

This will be an imageless post because, while I did have a camera, none of the pictures turned out well.

Demolishers now cost $25. This isn't a sale and they weren't marked as on clearance; presumably this is Walmart price-matching Target which currently has everything on clearance. I find it a little amusing that Demolishers are now cheaper than the Stryfes which occupy the same shelves. If you want a pile of Demolishers and live north of the 49th, now is the time to act.

Crossbolts have moved in and cost $29.92, which is exactly as much as a Retaliator and a fair bit more than I'd like to pay for a pump gun without accessories, even if it does look darn good as a Crossbolt does. I'm cautiously excited about the potential performance of stringer blasters such as the Crossbolt when modified. Choice of cord would be paramount for such a project; I suspect that something intended for slingshots would work well, but there are a lot of uncertainties here. How much force can the catch take and how well can it be reinforced with common materials? How well could the blaster work with flat elastic such as the powerful and popular theraband gold?

There were a few transparent green and orange Jolts on the shelves, with grey triggers. I had previously seen a lone transparent orange Jolt and assumed that it had ended up here by mistake; Canada is not a grey-trigger country. The picture that I took turned out horribly blurry, so I'll link to a picture from SBNC (the colours look better in person). 

Cycloneshocks and Bigshocks have also moved in, which means that this store now has every mega blaster save for the Rotofury on its shelves, as has a huge variety of Rebelle blasters: 4Victories, Secret Shots, Mini Mischiefs, Rapid Reds, Slingbacks, Mini Blasters (i.e. bulky Jolts), and Stronghearts. The store's supply of what I have come to regard as its staple blasters - Stryfes, Roughcuts, Strongarms, and Firestrikes - seems to have held up well, so this represents a huge increase in variety compared to what has been sitting on the shelves over the previous few months.

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