Last month, when Halo 4 was released, the game sold $220 million in the first 24 hours it was available. The following week, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 was released and generated over $500 million in sales on its first day. Aside from astounding sales figures, these anecdotes prove one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: as a culture, we love to shoot things.
Our family is no different. Whether it’s playing a FPS or shooting action figures with foam darts, we are a somewhat competitive bunch. So when Zing Toys asked us if we’d like to try out their line of soft foam toys, we jumped at the chance — and we’re very glad that we did.
Both the Z-Curve Bow and Cross Bow work in the same fashion. A foam arrow, with either a blunt tip or suction cup, is loaded into the bow by hooking a rubber loop on prongs that protrude from either side of the arrow’s head. It’s a unique way of loading but one that Zing says will prevent rocks, sticks, or other objects from being used in the bows.
The arrow is drawn back and released when ready in the case of the Z-Curve Bow and hooked to the rear of the Cross Bow before pulling the trigger in the case of the Cross Bow. Both methods return tremendous results of very impressive velocity. The Cross Bow is able to shoot about 50 feet and the Z-Curve Bow can fire as far as 125 feet.
To give you an idea of its power, I shot a blunt-tipped arrow from the Z-Curve Bow at a wall 40 feet away. The arrow hit the wall with minimal drop and bounced back almost 15 feet. Distances like these are amazing and fun, but also should carry a word of warning that shooting inside is probably not recommended, especially around anything breakable.
The Z-Curve Bow comes with three arrows, two blunt tips and one with a suction cup tip, while the Cross Bow comes with three suction cup arrows, which have a smaller length than the Z-Curve Bow arrows. The quality of both the bows and the arrows seems to be pretty good and they have really held up under many target practice sessions.
While I would highly recommend these toys to diversify your foam weapon arsenal, they are better for an older crowd. Zing recommends ages eight and older, which is probably correct (although my son had trouble loading the Cross Bow). But, as with any toy that fires a projectile, you should also consider supervising your kids until you are certain they can use the toy properly.
The Z-Curve Bow is available at Amazon and other retailers, the Cross Bow is exclusively sold at WalMart.
Disclosure: GeekDad received samples of both of these products.
