Dart Zone Buccaneer Review

At the beginning of this year, Dart Zone had a surprise release of flintlock/pirate blasters, available initially in Australia. When New York Toy Fair rolled around, they were still trying to get American retailers to pick up the products. Now, we finally have at least one of the models available.

The Buccaneer is a four-shot, hammer primed blaster, available either in a two-pack from Dart Zone themselves, or in a roleplay set from Walmart’s Adventure Force brand. It’s a niche blaster, so the value is largely in the eye of the beholder. Even so, it’s hard to NOT have fun being a pirate, so the blasters are at least worth a look.

ARRRRRRRR

At first glance, the blasters look amazing. I grabbed mine from the Dart Zone 2-pack, since I’m not worried about having the kid-sized props of the Adventure Force pack. But even if I don’t want the spyglass or pirate hat, I’m grabbing the blasters to have fun with the pirate aesthetic. The sooner we’re honest about this, the sooner we get an accurate rating and review!

The blaster itself is relatively small in size, though the handle fits most hands quite well – mine were borrowed recently by someone much smaller, and they had lots of fun using the blasters. The “flintlock” bit is the priming handle – you operate the lever with your thumb. The action primes the blaster as well as rotating the cylinder at the front of the blaster. It should be noted, though, that it’s possible to not press the lever down all the way. The cylinder will stay rotated and the spring partially primed, but you’ll need to finish pressing the lever back to fully prime the blaster before you fire. When the blaster is fully primed, a yellow indicator will fill a window at the back of the blaster.

There aren’t any tactical rails or attachments to speak of here, it’s a pirate pistol. Most of us have seen the classic Buzz Bee design that gets sold at Cracker Barrel. This falls in the same category, just with more capacity and power (within reason).

At the very least, the detailing helps. Even the writing on the side with the name of the blaster and “Powered by PT-DZ” is in cursive with flourishes embedded in the plastic. The blaster is both modern and classic, and I can appreciate the effort.

Here’s someone else’s thoughts on the blaster:

Performance and Internals

The Buccaneer isn’t a powerhouse, by any means. I’m averaging 65fps with the included Nitroshot darts from the DZ website pack. One handed, I’m doing one dart per second. If I’m holding a blaster in one hand and fanning the lever with the other, it’s two darts per second.

Opening the blaster takes a little effort – once the main screws are removed, there’s a ring at the front of the blaster, at the base of the cylinder, that has to be lifted around the tabs keeping it in place. Use a flathead screwdriver or a spudger, but know the plastic will get some stress marks at the very least.

In my case, I simply removed the safety valve at the front of the plunger – I play in enough environments that I want to be able to use both short and long darts, or at least want to be able to use both if loading from the field. If you want a short dart exclusive blaster, a mod exists, but it’s very thorough.

Final Opinion

The Dart Zone Buccaneer isn’t pretending to be performance blaster. It exists for the sake of fun. It’s a good reminder that, for a lot of us, we dressed up like a pirate for Halloween somewhere, and we enjoy engaging in these fantasies just for the fun of it.

Granted, of course I’m going to use these blasters at some event where they’re absolutely not the recommended equipment. But I’ll still have a ton of fun doing it, because why not enjoy getting tags with a pirate pistol???