I don’t often review the same blaster twice, unless there’s a significant update. This is one of those times. Originally, Buzz Bee (at least in the US) sold the Tracker under Walmart’s Adventure Force line, complete with a heat-sensitive scope. I reviewed that blaster and found it to be adequate, although it’s slow as to be expected for a bolt-action blaster. This time, however, the blaster is being sold with a new 30-round drum, and that itself is a significant development. And it’s better than expected – albeit with slight tweaking. Sometimes things from Toy Fair show up in unexpected places!

The Blaster and its Updates

The blaster itself has all the same features as before – bolt action, movable stock, and a small grip. It does however, trade the green for red in terms of color scheme.

The blaster does, however, fire better than the last version. Rate of fire, of course, is the same. But the dart velocities were noticeably higher, with 82fps averages with the included darts and 80fps with Nerf Elites.

The Important Part!

Most of the buzz, however, comes with the drum. It’s a nice, smooth design without any sharp turns in the dart path, and relies on two separate springs. A compression spring handles the initial drop – once the follower has entered the drum, further loading rotates a large torsion spring at the back of the drum assembly. It’s an interesting design, and one that works for the platform. Which doesn’t need fast feeding.

Fixing that, however, is an easy solution. Opening the drum requires removing five screws and undoing several tabs that hold the top of the magazine together. Realistically, you only need to pop the bottom two tabs. Once done, you can slide the guts out in one piece. If your drum feeds slowly, you can add tension by rotating the drum once (until it stops), then popping the drum up and over the stop position. This will make the drum portion feed much faster (don’t overdo it, or you’ll actually push against flywheel dart pushers and stall them).

Reassembly is a bit of a pain if you don’t align the panels just right, but it just takes a little patience.

One small gripe is having the clear panel in front. Which means everyone besides the user can tell how many rounds are left. At least there is a small cutout in the panel for manual adjustment, if you have to force the drum to rotate.

Last Thoughts

The new version of the Tracker performs better than the old, although your opinion of it will surely rest on the grip size and how much you like bolt-action blasters. However, the drum that comes with the blaster is of high quality; it can easily be made to feed fast for any of your high RoF blasters.

As of now, we’ve only seen it at Meijer grocery stores in the Midwest. It is unknown when it will appear elsewhere (or on Meijer’s website, for that matter).