Product development at Hasbro must be difficult. Everyone outside the company probably thinks you sit around all day shooting darts at your co-workers, reenacting the famous Great Office War video. It is not easy to be an engineer, marketer, industrial designer, material specialist, marketer or any other person involved in bringing new products on the market. After all, youve already developed the chain-fed N-Strike Vulcan that would make Rambo proud, so where do you go from there? You probably think the same way as Hasbro’s poor designers if you guess something like faster, further, or more. Or, at least, thats what we imagined when trying out the Nerf Vortex Diatron.
On its surface, the Diatron appears to be a very close cousin to the Vortex Vigilon. The Diatron has a similar spring-fed, side-loading internal chamber. It can hold 10 discs max. It is controlled with a thumb-switch either side. The only thing that sets the Diatron apart from the Vigilon, is its Multishot Madness ability, to fire two discs simultaneously. We’ll get into this problem shortly.
But there is one other difference versus the Vigilon that any experienced Nerf enthusiast will notice immediately. And its so significant, one has to wonder if those product guys at Hasbro are planning to do more with this idea, or if the Diatron is just a one-off test-run of someones wacky, after-hours experiment. The difference were talking about is the priming mechanism. The Diatron’s prime mechanism is unique to any Nerf product. It folds along the left-hand blaster side. To prime the blaster, the user pushes the lever out to roughly perpendicular with the unit until a unique click is heard and felt. Once seated, push the lever back against the body. The blaster will then fire. While I didnt personally find this action counter-intuitive (and come to actually like it, after a while), two other members of our staff found it confusing, and were actually completely unable to fire the blaster on their first few attempts, with several jams and misfires frustrating both of them in the process. The lever is also quite fragile. It could be pulled too far, snapping off or breaking something inside. In fairness, that has not yet happened in our experience. It does however make it less fun to use this blaster if you worry about breaking something in the heat.
It is possible to wonder if Hasbro’s product managers are going to expand on this idea or if the Diatron is a one-off experiment by someone crazy after-hours.
Once you get past the odd priming mechanism, however, you get to enjoy the thrill of shooting two, long-range Vortex discs at once. And a thrill it is! The Diatron launches both discs at exactly the same time, and in our tests, at typically the same overall trajectory. So its entirely possible to hit your target with two discs at once, or at longer ranges, to have at least one of your two shots reach the intended destination. Surprisingly, firing two discs at once with one priming did not reduce overall range. Indoors, we were able consistently to reach mid-18.3m distances (both inclined and flat), with some reaching 75+ feet. At these distances, velocity was almost non-existent and one disc would usually reach the same distance. This is still a respectable range for any blaster this generation. And while the accuracy of shot groupings wasnt as consistent as weve found with flywheel-based blasters and did show the typical Vortex arcs, well forgive it for the sheer fact that you get two attempts to hit every target, and you can do so at great distances.
The Diatron does not come with enough discs to allow for long-range multishot shooting. It can hold 10 discs but comes with 8 discs. This encourages you to purchase a set of refill discs. It feels like a bit of a cheap move on Hasbros part (not unlike our criticism of the Stryfe, which came with a measly 6-dart clip), but in all honesty, the Diatron doesnt do so well with a full 10 discs in the magazine. Filling it to the very top is quite tricky, as the magazine has a very tight fight with all 10 discs, and jamming seemed to occur quite often. While 8 discs might be ideal, you can only use 4 shots per shot. And then youre either running around picking up discs, or youre leaving the Diatron aside for something with a higher capacity. Making matters worse, the Diatron inexplicably cant fire with only a single round loaded in the clip. You need at least two rounds. It requires at least 2 rounds.
We are back at Hasbro’s hard-working product designers who tried something new with the Diatron.
The Nerf Vortex line is a solid addition to its own line (excellent ranges, decent accuracy, and a novel multishot design), but it’s let down by the requirement that two discs must always be loaded and that only 10 can be stored in the internal magazine. And thats not even attempting to pass a verdict on the side-priming stick that some of us found fine to use, but others found somewhat fiddly and potentially fragile. Nonetheless, we applaud Hasbro for green-lighting something different with the Diatron. Its unceasingly fun to fire two shots at once, and its cool that this blaster does so in a way thats different from everything else currently on shelves. Although the Diatron may not be better than the rest, it reinforces Hasbro’s position as a leader and an innovator in this category.
