Ever since my days of watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on television, I always thought it would be so cool to be able to say, "I call crossbow!" . . . Well, now I can.
I actually wanted to try these toy bows and crossbows for awhile, but our children were just too young. If you play online games as an archer, you must wonder what it is actually like to use one. I was a bit curious, but I never was curious enough to actually sign up for archery lessons. Since our son turned 8 this year, I felt he was old enough to use a projectile toy such as the Air Storm Z-Curve Bow and the Z-X Crossbow under strict supervision. Our 5 year old twins, however, are barely old enough to even be around someone using these toys. They needed to be reminded constantly to stand off to the side or behind the person holding the bow.
I chose the Z-Curve Bow because it looked like an easy-to-use long range bow. It also comes with both 2 foam-tipped Z-Arrows and one suction cup-tipped Zartz arrow . . .
(Click any photo to enlarge)
My husband, who is the strongest among us, thought that the Air Storm Z-Curve Bow had quite a lot of resistance. Of course, it depends on how far back you want to pull the arrow in order to make it go further.
My husband actually much preferred the Air Storm Z-X Crossbow, which comes with 3 suction cup Zartz arrows. It is handy that it has places to store the two extra arrows underneath when they are not in use.
The crossbow works with a trigger mechanism that has a safety. The safety is automatically turned on when you cock an arrow. One thing we wished was different is that, after you release the safety, you cannot turn it back on. You would need to shoot the arrow if you are worried about the crossbow accidentally being triggered if you needed to put it down or leave it unattended.
Please watch our short video demonstrating both toys . . .
For the video, we had set up cups as targets on a park bench. Although I did not capture it on video, there were a few times that the suction cup arrows missed the cups, hit the back of the bench, and stayed where they hit. I was astonished at how well they attached themselves to a painted wooden surface.
Surprisingly, our 8 year old son preferred the Curve Bow over the Crossbow. He found the crossbow to be very difficult to load. It really does take a lot of muscle. He also found that the crossbow had a kick to it when he triggered it. He thought the Curve Bow was easy to load and, although he could not pull the arrow back as far as an adult, he could pull it back enough to make the arrow travel quite far.
To learn more about the new Air Storm product line from Zing Toys, visit ZingToys.com. We have been seeing Air Storm toys everywhere in recent weeks, including our local Walmart, Toys "R" Us, and Target stores.
Thank you to Zing Toys for providing complimentary product samples for us to base this review upon.
