I went to bed last night and decided to look through the United States Patent and Trademark Office in search of new information. Hasbros patent for the Hyper line just went live, with lots of fun information inside.
We discovered that the Dart Zone patents that we had initially overlooked were actually new thanks to u/Abquintic, and other members of the Discord. The Cornerfire filing is the most recent, and the flywheel Villainator is the mainstay. Lets jump in!
According to the filing, the new ammunition is quite dense and tacky. In addition to specifying a preferred blend of TPE (from a corporation in Ohio, of all places), it also lists the defining characteristics of Hyper ammo. It has a weight target of 1.44g, a diameter of 14.8mm and a Shore A hardness 10 (softer than a rubber band). It has the same surface dimples as Rival. It can also stick together and compress when fed into a blaster. As such, much of the patent is devoted to the shapes and motions of the feeding mechanisms needed to reliably load and fire the ammo, be they specially shaped channels or lifting elements to keep ammo stacked in the hopper from interfering.
The paper also specifies the dimensions and shape of the flywheels for the Hyper Mach-100. If you’re looking to build your own Hyper blaster, here are some numbers that you can extrapolate.
This one almost caught my eye, but I finally saw it. I was curious about what was happening and then I noticed the rev trigger. Yep, it may look similar, but its a completely different blaster, and has a unique loading mechanism to boot! Of course Dart Zone would be able to invent a wacky thing to make this work.
The drum, while still holding 40 darts, is actually more akin to 20 2-dart magazines mounted in a circle! While the drum rotates, darts remain in their magazines. A blaster-mounted follower presses down upon the darts to ensure that they reach the firing position. Its a cool solution that results in less weight and complexity in the drum itself. The drum can be removed, so you can load and unload the drum as needed. Kudos, Dart Zone!
Note that patents generally give no indication of retailer, so whether this is released under the Dart Zone brand or Adventure Force is up for grabs.
Cornerfire as it was originally released used a ten-dart cylinder. However, the original patent showed it using a magazine.
Its old news at this point. HOWEVER, Im showing it here because updated action was taken on the patent application late last year and being approved in January. While the revolver version is still available, the magazine-fed version could be yet to see the light.
