Xshot Insanity Clip Mania Review

Over the years, Zuru’s Xshot brand has been hesitant to introduce battery-powered blasters of any kind – having to source and wire up electrical components within a toy ultimately adds cost to what is historically a budget brand, one that has famously achieved near-total automation for their other blaster products. That changed with the introduction of the Insanity Rage Fire, a $50 chain-fed minigun that also serves as the base for the Insanity series of blasters, highlighting the building of fun blaster combos. Clearly, that’s been a runaway success, because Zuru is at it again with the Clip Mania.

Just in time for the holidays, we have a $25 box with a blaster, three magazines, 72 darts, and various attachments. And while issues with its construction prevent it from being truly great, it’s still a really good blaster that kids will enjoy annoying their parents and siblings with.

Wait, I’ve Seen This Before!

As far as the format is concerned, the Clip Mania isn’t new. It follows in the footsteps of many other blasters before it, but the closest comparison is to its fellow shelf-mate at Walmart, the Adventure Force Spectrum. Both offer high performance from 6 AA batteries (not included), have adjustable stocks, and are fed by full-length dart magazines. Even the pusher mechanism is made similarly, unlike the “pusher post” types that Nerf tends to use.

The main difference with the Clip Mania, of course, is what else comes in the box. As part of the Insanity series, it’s meant to emphasize excess. To that end, the blaster comes with three magazines, two magazine holder attachments, a “jungle mag” attachment for connecting the bottoms of two different magazines, and a spare dart holder. If you have any Picatinny rail connectors from other blasters in the series, you can link the blasters to carry them all at once (even if using multiple blasters at a time would be impractical).

Granted, with this being a flywheel blaster, you shouldn’t be pressing the blaster into your shoulder with any real amount of force…but it does mean I would be wary of using that stock on other blasters.

Despite the attachment tolerances, the blaster itself is comfortable to hold and use. It’s a bit chunky and plain in construction, but everything is easy to manipulate, from the triggers to the magazine release.

Performance

The Clip Mania, on fresh AA batteries, averaged 89fps with the included darts. Rate of fire can go up to four darts per second, though of course the dart velocity on later darts will suffer due to the motors not having time to fully spin up again.

My blaster wasn’t too loud when I was testing it, but I’ve heard of fellow Nerfers with especially loud samples, which would indicate unbalanced flywheels being spun by the motors. Your mileage may vary in this regard.

Internals and Mods

At long last, I got the chance to just sit down, make measurements, and produce a flywheel cage! It’s been far too long, and the files are on Thingiverse.

As for the blaster itself, there’s nothing new going on under the hood, though aside from the flywheel cage itself, there aren’t any other screws hiding inside. The battery tray, pusher, triggers, etc. all just drop in and mesh with each other. In fact, the only other screws inside are specifically for attaching the side rails – they already clip into place, but given the emphasis on making giant blaster monstrosities, I’m sure Zuru wanted to make sure the connection points were a bit more secure.

Last Thoughts

The Xshot Insanity Clip Mania is a somewhat large, blocky blaster, but it’s comfortable to use and operate. The attachments aren’t the best, but they’re good enough for little kids constructing their arsenals. Even with the tradeoffs, though, the performance is there. $25 for a blaster, extra darts and magazines, and a few add-ons is perfectly justifiable. As soon as I have a game on the horizon, I’ll be using the blaster and adding in some footage, but I’m pretty set in my opinion. The Xshot Insanity Clip Mania is worth purchasing.