Zuru is more likely to be found in the lower-priced range of foam flinging. However, theres an area around the mark thats mainly occupied by box sets of smaller blasters, and not a midsize blaster. Turbo Fire fills that niche with its twenty shots and slam fire capabilities. However, it has some issues with the slam-fire mode, which make it slightly less useful (but thats easily fixed). It’s still a great blaster and worth checking out.
Reimagining An Original
The Turbo Fire, a Zurus main blaster, was introduced earlier in the decade. It featured pump action and twenty shots. It originally came in green, and featured several iterations before coming off of shelves. now features the redesign.
The Turbo Fire is a rear-priming blaster, with twenty shots in the drum. The new blaster also features a foregrip molded into the shell, and a pop-up sight sits on top. Storage for eight darts sits in the middle of the drum its purely storage, not another firing row like on the Turbo Advance.
It is fairly large with a thumbhole and no stock. It has textured molding and is easy to grip and use. On the whole, the blaster feels sufficiently sturdy in hand. Not quite the same feel as a Nerf-branded blaster, but good enough to not feel cheap.
Admittedly, Im torn on the design. It looks like a long blaster, good for holding on to (no stock, afterall) and slam firing. The front barrel could have been removed and it would still look fine, but it was shorter, almost like a pistol. However, thats a matter of personal taste.
A Problem To Address And Internals
The Turbo Fire features an interesting setupon the inside.
As with the Turbo Advance, the large plunger tube can be expected at this stage. The blaster has a number of spring-loaded tabs inside, along with the standard catch system. The tabs can be reset by being depressed at certain points by the plastic body. The tab on the plunger allows the user to fire the blaster by pressing the trigger. This means you will need a bigger plunger but it works.
There is a similar tab attached to the rotation arm. Normally, after moving back with the plunger and rotating the drum, the tab would hit a ridge, depress, and then reset in the forward position. My experience was that slam-firing a blaster would result in the blaster becoming stuck at the transition point. This is because the tab was not fully depressing to allow the priming motion to continue. My problem was solved by shaving perhaps 1mm off my height. It is possible that this was just a fluke with my blaster. However, it is now documented in case anyone else experiences the same issue.
Performance
Turbo Fire fired properly and averaged 82 fps when using the included darts. Elite darts hit 76 fps. The slam fire function worked as it was intended and I was able hit nearly four darts per minute in rate of fire. As you would expect from modern Xshot blasters, I had good performance.
Final Thoughts
Zuru has a nice pattern or redesigning their older blasters so far, with updates on the Reflex 6, Xcess, and now the Turbo Fire. gets a mid-sized blaster with great performance and ammo capacity, but it does have a potential issue with slam-fire thatmay need to be addressed in order for the blaster to fully function as intended. Once it does, however, its a great option for an inexpensive stock blaster.
