At the low end of Nerf Super Soaker’s offerings this spring is the Bottle Burst. It’s small and unassuming, and comes in its own display packaging. It’s also made to adapt to the most common PET beverage containers you’d find on store shelves or within your refrigerator. This isn’t as effective as it could be…but the end result is still a fun toy that can be thrown in your pocket until it’s needed.
WE CAN GO SMALLER
The Bottle Blitz is one of the smallest official Super Soaker offerings I’ve ever seen on store shelves, not counting licensed bits like the Wowwee Super Soaker keychains and other similar novelties. Without the included reservoir, the blaster just a 6.5″ long piston pump. With the screw-on reservoir, it hits a mere 9″. It comes in three colorways, and it’s as simple in operation as you can get. Extend the pump to suck in water, then pull back to fire.
The Bottle Blitz advertises 120mL in capacity; that’s a safe estimate, though if you fill the the reservoir all the way up, the measured capacity is more like 130mL. Additionally, the pump itself draws and fires 8mL with each stroke
You can fire up to 30′ with the bottle blitz, at an angle, but at that distance you have a cloud of droplets. Firing quickly also results in a less cohesive stream. This is a small manual toy, after all, not a large soaker that you’re expecting to drench opponents with; I can accept that no toy engineer in their right mind would spend many billable hours trying to get the perfect nozzle for it.
Firing the blaster level only gives a few shots, due to the short feed hose.
Using With Other Bottles
The Bottle Burst’s reservoir uses the same 28mm threads as the common beverage containers out there (20oz, .5L, 2L, etc.). Naturally, I had to try using it with said bottles. However, this feature is severely limited, due to the length of hose that draws water into the blaster. Once you’ve used ~200mL (still an increase from base capacity), that hose is no longer submerged. Now you’re carrying a heavy, unusable blaster.
Being able to use other bottles isn’t a new development – I’ve seen that on things like the Lanard Wave Thrower for ages now, However, those usually have longer feed hoses that hang down in the bottle, allowing better use of bottle capacity. They’re slightly more expensive, but far more versatile.
In this case, I feel like the Bottle Burst would have benefitted from omitting the included reservoir completely, and instead had the bottle adapter mounted at a 90 degree angle. That way, you could just let gravity do the work for you while using whatever size bottle you wanted. I wonder if I can print an adapter on my own for that…
Last Thoughts
Being able to use other bottles as reservoirs isn’t quite as effective as it could be. Even so, the Nerf Super Soaker Bottle Burst is a cute, inexpensive novelty soaker that’s easy to use and stow away. Plus, you get a range of fun colors to choose from. And in the end, it’s hard to argue with the power of the cute impulse purchase. At minimum, it’s fun for the kids!