Super Soaker Central

I've seen a few different new guns by Lanard. There are various colours and sizes - a small green one, a larger red one. The styling is more realistic than supersoakers or water warriors, with a sort of worn effect on the paintwork. And they have both a normal pump and a rotary crank.

It's quite difficult to find stuff online, but this is one of them.

http://www.amazon.com/Lanard-Total-X-St ... 094&sr=1-3

I've seen them on sale in WHSmith and Woolworths (in England).

Does anyone know anything about these guns? Are they any good? What is with the crank?

I believe Zoccoz once posted about the three soakers. One of the people who's fought in Duxburian's water wars has used one of them. They're not exactly the best in terms of performance.

I haven't used them so there's nothing I can say about them. Generally Lanard's water guns are decent but not spectacular. The crank technology is interesting nonetheless. I think if it were done more powerfully they'd be pretty good. Perhaps I should research their mechanism...

The gun you've linked to cantab is intriguing me. It says it uses air pressure and a crank. I'm just speculating but I think that means it uses a crank air/water pump to pressurize a chamber. Maybe not though because it does seem to have a normal pump as well. Maybe it's like two guns stuck in one case where one gun is air pressure and the other is a crank.

This is slightly off-topic but I think some people will find it amusing. When Mattel made their crank water guns (the Shield Blasters) something funny happened. I distinctively remember back in 2004 when WaterWar.net was still around (geez, it feels like so long ago!) some guy came on talking about how great the Shield Blasters were. It read like an advertisement from what I remember. iSoaker said it likely was a company paid to advertise for Mattel and they decided to post at a forum. That's probably one of the few times we've been directly targeted in an advertising campaign.

Maybe you had to be there to appreciate it but it was funny. Hopefully we'll eventually see that if iSoaker ever releases some old archives.

Minor update on this - I believe the guns are called

Waterbolt - small, green
Waveblaster - medium, blue
Thunderhead - large, red

They also don't seem to be under the Total X-Stream brand, rather they say "Water Weapons" on the front, with a gunsight logo. I'm pretty sure they are made by Lanard.

The Entertainer (British toy shop) has them all. I think I'll wait until they get marked down at the end of summer, then maybe buy one.

Ben wrote:This is slightly off-topic but I think some people will find it amusing. When Mattel made their crank water guns (the Shield Blasters) something funny happened. I distinctively remember back in 2004 when WaterWar.net was still around (geez, it feels like so long ago!) some guy came on talking about how great the Shield Blasters were. It read like an advertisement from what I remember. iSoaker said it likely was a company paid to advertise for Mattel and they decided to post at a forum. That's probably one of the few times we've been directly targeted in an advertising campaign.

Maybe you had to be there to appreciate it but it was funny. Hopefully we'll eventually see that if iSoaker ever releases some old archives.

Ha, I remember that, including the sudden attempt by the guy to try and suddenly dumb down his language and convince us he wasn't advertising them.