As is usual, a few blasters are released at the tail end of the holiday season without much fanfare. Compared to rereleases like the Modulus Longstrike and flagships like the Prometheus, the Rukkus ICS-8 isn’t a blaster that will receive much fanfare. It’s a large, quirky pistol that, for $20, really doesn’t do anything special, especially when blaster like the Buzz Bee Jaguar or the Dart Zone Havoc Powerclip have done more in a smaller package for less than half the cost.

Battlescout Redux

For some reason, Hasbro likes to occasionally put out blasters with unique clip systems. In the recent past, the Battlescout and the Mega Thunderhawk come to mind. In each case, the blasters were rather subpar in at least some fashion, whether by performance or price.

The Rekkus, at least, better matches its capabilities to its price. The blaster is primed via top slide, firing from an eight round, non-removable clip. It also has slamfire capabilities, letting you hold the trigger and fire the blaster as fast as you can prime the slide.

The shell is solid, if a bit uninspiring in design. It features the same sort of textured tiger stripe design seen on the Infinus. The large, textured, open grip is comfortable to hold. The priming slide is adequate, with some ribs for gripping. However, they’re smooth in nature and actually become harder to use with sweaty hands.

The integrated clip is semicircular in shape, and sits at the front of the blaster. It’s also rather large and heavy. The clip moves up on the return motion of the priming slide, and it actually requires similar levels of force to move the clip as it does to prime the blaster. This ends up slowing down the rate of fire to roughly 2.5 darts per second. Thankfully, the blaster gets “Elite” performance, with darts averaging 65 fps. On that front, at least, the blaster isn’t a disappointment.

Reloading the blaster in one go takes a bit of time, since part of the clip is always obscured by the barrel. There’s nothing preventing you from manually moving the clip (with a bit of force), however, so reloading on the go can still be done. But it’s a very clunky implementation.

Looking Inside

The outside panels of the Rukkus unscrew easily, revealing a Strongarm/Disruptor type system. A priming sled moves the plunger backwards until it catches, with a ratcheting mechanism preventing anything but a full priming motion. In addition, an indexing arm (in white) is pushed forward as you complete the slide’s forward motion. This moves up the clip, retracting after a white locking lever (at the bottom of the sled) is tilted out of the way.

Final Thoughts

In my opinion, there are far better blasters to buy for $20. The Rukkus doesn’t do anything special compared to other blasters. The integrated clip actually slows down your rate of fire, due to the extra engineering and force needed to raise that much mass. I’m sure someone out there will do something fun like design 3D printed, removable clips. But for everyday use? There are much better options available.