Who the heck is Akimbo? Fire foam -- John Woo Style

You put one gun in a hero's hand, and he looks sufficiently armed, depending on what he's up against. But you put one gun in each of his hands, now he has two, and suddenly he's larger than life, a super badass, invincible, able to slow time and dodge bullets and spank Neo all at the same time.

The person I'd like to write this tribute to is actor Chow Yun-Fat who had worked eleven hard years in Hong Kong's daytime soap opera circuit until recruited by director John Woo for the film A Better Tomorrow which catapulted him from leading ladies' man to leading MAN and ultra badass with two guns, cooler than Chuck Norris himself.

So how does one nerf like this?

Buzz Bee's Twin Tek Four



This was available as a set for around $10 or less at K-Mart, so I immediately nabbed this. It comes with a target (don't care). Four yellow darts and four green darts come with the yellow and green blasters. What originally drew me to the Tek Four other than price was the fact that you cock it by pulling the rear handle.

And then I notice the rear handle's "T" shape and figured, "That looks like a hook. What if I can hook both together and pull the guns in opposite directions and cock them at the SAME time?" Bad move. First, the mechanism is based on a thin metal round bar, and the moment you try to lock the "T" handles one to the other, they rotate and no longer hold onto each other.

Yet in a firefight, I found the "T" shapes very accessible. For example, I could use the fingers of my right hand to cock the gun in my left without letting go of the gun in my right hand (bear in mind I'm a grown-up with medium-sized hands. Little kids: your mileage will vary, so eat your spinach, grow up to be big and strong, and when you're BIG and STRONG you won't need any steeenkin' nerf guns to pulverize your enemies and to hear their lamentation Conan-style.)

One drawback to the Tek Four is that they it has a short grip. While perhaps slightly shorter than the Nerf Crossfire, it's more ergonomic than the Crossfire. Smaller kids wouldn't have to worry; they can grip it fine. The trigger is reasonably comfortable, and while not wide enough for a grown-up's two-finger use, if gripping the entire handle is an issue, you could use your second/middle finger as your trigger finger. The depressed area above the trigger is actually long enough for an index finger. But I stopped playing with toy guns in this fashion a long time ago; since the middle finger is stronger than the index finger, little kids sometimes have to rely on it to pull tighter triggers, or until their hands build strength. I'm a grown-up so I don't have to do that any more, and besides, it makes holding the blaster awkward anyway.

Another drawback is that the cylinder does not automatically rotate to bring the next round into alignment. So now you not only have to cock the gun with the other hand, you have to use the other hand to rotate the barrel to prepare the next dart.

However, I was able to to do so with each opposite hand without letting go of my guns.

So while having to manually rotate the cylinder is a bummer, it's not toooooooo inconvenient. Realize now that you have to cock it and rotate the cylinder of each gun before you return fire. Reloading, however might be inconvenient because that is still a two handed action. Yet if your fingers are long enough, you might be able to reload without letting go of your blasters.

If your friend has a Maverick and you have a Tek Four in each hand, you have better firepower, but the trade-off is that it's slightly less convenient. The downside is you have to take cover more to prime your guns before you can return fire. The upside is you can be Chow Yun-Fat any time you want to.

Again, with my previous findings with the Tek Six and Tek 10, the range is a few feet better than the Maverick.

The plastic looks cheap, unfortunately. But none of the gloopy paint that I had seen on a 2004 Tek Six. The finish is consistent with the 2005 Tek Six and Tek 10 I've reviewed recently. Conversely, the Nerf Maverick and other blasters of Hasbro's Nerf N-Strike family have a satin texture to the plastic, which causes it to refract light differently than a glossy or waxy looking surface. Buzz Bee could probably learn a thing or two about finish from Hasbro.

So, what's comparable in the Nerf world?

Without modification, nothing.

You may argue the Nite Finder, the Scout, the Tech Target, the Firestrike, etc. But these are all single-round weapons without cylinders. You may even argue the Firefly and the Hornet, but the Firefly is kind of like a submachine gun (SMG) and the Hornet may be SMG-class but it has no cylinder; both are two bulky for single-handed operation.

The only handgun-style single-handed blasters with cylinder are the Airtech 1000 and the Maverick. The Airtech 1000 was made around 2004-2005 as a cheap $5.00 and is very hard to cock. I had bought two at K-Mart and they were utter pieces of garbage with poor range; the 1000 model only mimicked the look of its bigger cousins but not the functionality.

That leaves the Maverick.

The Maverick doesn't facilitate two-gun brandishing too conveniently. If you're gripping one in either hand and then you're trying to cock each gun by pulling their sliders back with the fingers of the opposite hand, it's very cumbersome. The Mavericks are somewhat heavier and the grips are full size, so you have to be careful not to let go of your gun.

However (yes, MacLaren here has been thinking about this) the very back of the slider is a hole in what would have been the hammer of a real gun -- right behind the orange-yellow rear site. It's gray and it's part of the plastic of the slider.

So if you can find some kind of roundbar plastic and if you can affix it to this hole, you can create a rear "T" handle to pull in order to cock the gun. Even better, with some ingenuity you could make the "T"s interlock and so you hook one to the other, pull them apart to cock both at the same time. Perhaps one is a hook and the other a circle. Use your imagination!