Buzz Bee Air Warriors Mayhem Mania Review

The Mayhem line is finally here! We knew that Buzz Bee was making a revamped blaster line, and some of them are appearing at Dollar General here in the United States. Now that I’ve tried the first one, though…it seems a bit less exciting.

The Mania is an eight dart, front-loading pistol that’s easy in operation and shoots well. However, the decision to make a large, sloped grip with a large kink in it results in an uncomfortable experience.

Changes in Packaging and Blaster Design

First, it’s worth noting that Buzz Bee has revamped their packaging. Already, they’ve made several blasters with minimalist display packages (the single shot “rifle” blasters, for one). Here, they’re taking a page from Xshot. Plastic twist tabs anchor into holes in one side of the blaster, and a strip of tape keeps each tab in place.

Buzz Bee, in a good move, kept those anchor holes on the same side of the blaster as the screw ports. In another move, the holes at least somewhat blend in with holes in the shell design. Maybe we can call that “Industrial Honeycomb”? The blaster is quite angular, with smooth curves only in select spots, and there are hexagons  of plastic missing.

Of course, the neatest decision is continuing the Twist Fury’s exposed plunger tube. I love anything that lets you peek at how a blaster works.

The blaster comes with eight Accublast darts, and features a Buzz Bee attachment rail on top. The priming handle is large and easy to manipulate, turning the cylinder on the prime. All good points so far.

That Handle, Though…

My wife is a UX researcher. That’s her job that she gets paid to do. After handing her the blaster (without telling anything) and asking what she thought about using it, she said it was uncomfortable.

As she quoted, of course: “That’s why user experience is important!”

The handle has lots of area to grip it – but the severe slope and the bend force the user to choke up on the handle in order to reach and operate the trigger while aiming. It’s just not comfortable to hold for any period of time.

Performance

The Mania does its job proficiently, averaging 78fps in my testing with the included darts (which are on the heavy end of current stock darts). Two darts per second is the rate of fire you can expect.

Internals

There is a slight issue to opening up this blaster: the top white plate has solvent welding around the tabs where it clips in place. I was able to pry the shell halves apart enough for the welding to snap, as opposed to the plastic.

The internals are pretty robust, compared to other things I’ve seen. The rotation mechanism used a metal linkage. There’s a metal pin extending back from the rotation index that the trigger and its return spring mount on. The plunger tube is easy to disassemble, and when you’ve reached that point, there’s a single screw needed to take apart the plunger rod and access the spring.

There’s a large bleed hole in the front cap of the plunger tube. If someone ends up making a cylinder with longer barrels, that will need covered in order to fully utilize all the air in the plunger tube.

Last Thoughts

The Mania performs well, and it looks cool. But it doesn’t feel great to use for any length of time. Additionally…$15 for an eight shot pistol is a hard sell. Granted, Dollar General’s economics of scale compared to other stores means some of their items get priced higher than the expected MSRP. And there’s *whatever* the current situation with tariffs is. But it’s still a concern for the wallet in this case.

The Mania works. It really just depends how much that handle turns you off.