Surprisingly, despite the Motor Soaker sub-line being out for over a year, I haven’t really reviewed any of them. I’ve played around with them, but last year the actual reviews just didn’t happen. Let’s change that, starting with this year’s newest entry!
Xshot’s Motor Soaker Turbo Stream is relatively inexpensive, and looks amazing. Practically, however, its deficiencies make it inferior to its larger siblings. But it’s still plenty of fun for smaller kids who might not be lugging around large amounts of water.
Magazines?
Do note that the *magazine* is the “Fast Fill” part here, not the blaster. It holds around ~330mL of water, and is easily inserted and removed from the blaster. Flip the cap up to fill, then close after. The magazine release button is on the left side, where you can manipulate it with your thumb while pulling the reservoir out.
The Turbo Stream is quite easy to use and operate. Two screws hold down the battery compartment door, which holds 4 AA batteries (not included). Once you insert the batteries, pull the trigger and the pump begins to cycle. In a neat touch, there’s also a circuit board at the tip of the oversized orange barrel, with LEDs that light up as you’re firing. It’s not that useful in the daytime; it does look cool at night, though it also serves as a beacon for your position. Still, rule of cool and all that.
Overall, the blaster looks great. I have no issues with the aesthetics or handling.
Performance
But, 4AA are what we have here, and the resulting fire is less for soaking and more for annoying. On fresh batteries, the blaster is spurting out 3mL per second, in small, rapid bursts. Furthermore, at the listed 23′ ranges, that stream of water is very much a shower of droplets. So you need to be chasing your target up close in order to get them appreciably wet.
Looking Inside
You have to press down four tabs on the orange barrel once the various screws have been removed, but disassembly is possible. Not that I’ll do anything here, it’s just for learning purposes. More tabs secure the white plastic inside the blaster.
The blaster’s important bits are all sealed off with gaskets or and adhesive filler (in the case of entry holes for wiring), with generous amounts of grease filling both the motor compartment and the gearbox. A plastic push rod is used to operate the two metal plates of the power switch, and metal tabs connect points inside and outside of the motor compartment. The gearbox uses a funky, low-plastic version of a scotch yoke to operate the reciprocating piston in front of it; tabs on the final gear contact tabs on the piston sled to move it in and out. The pump only displaces ~0.5mL of water with each motion, so it has to be screaming along at 6 pumps per second to output the water amounts above.
The LEDs just sit on the front of the blaster, with wires running back to those tabs on the motor box.
Last Thoughts
Motorized soakers have their limitations. To their credit, Zuru has been using other features like Fast Fill to help augment the gameplay possibilities – the other Motor Soakers in the line can just be dunked into a pool or other source to refill them, and they can be powered with rechargeable batteries.
The Turbo Stream aims to be cheap and friendly, but that also limits what it can do, especially when one of the most intriguing aspects, the magazine, can’t be found separately. Given the choice between buying this and buying the Hydra Pulse for $5, the Hydra Pulse will win *almost* every time, at least from an adult perspective.
Little kids? Yeah, it fits the bill. Me? Not so much.