Whereas a Rapidstrike (or Turbine, for that matter) have the pusher gears in a discrete unit, the pusher motor, switches, and various gears are all contained in the general clamshell of guts here. With the absence of Toy Fair and other press events, releases on the Nerf front have been relatively quiet, aside from new lines like Rival Curve Shot or Hyper. This also corresponds to the area under greatest stress when ULTRA Darts impact their target, weakening this joint and often causing the heads to come loose or detach. This entry was posted in Dart Blasters, Reviews and tagged 2021, blaster, blasterhub, hasbro, nerf, review, Select, Ultra on July 11, 2021 by BuffdaddyNerf. Seeing as Ultra blasters have mechanisms to prevent firing non-Ultra darts and objects, I assume that provision was made for an extra switch until the pusher mechanism safety was proven.

There have been reports online that ULTRA Darts suffer from significant wear and tear around the dart head. It has a streamlined dart head, similar to that of Mega Darts, though the dart heads of ULTRA Darts feature two small parallel holes towards the top. Once the pusher position switch is engaged, the mechanism shuts off and resets, waiting for the next trigger depression to start things over again. Initial testing has them hitting much tighter groupings at distance, as well as slightly better initial velocities out of the Select. War use is still up in the air (if there’s wind, you’re out of luck regardless), but even so, we finally have accurate Ultra darts.The blaster still retains the standard Ultra-sized grip, along with a hand guard that’s restrictive for larger fingers, especially in the trigger area. The carry handle is nice, though I suspect it serves to also strengthen the shell (a magazine carriage instead of a single magazine well means less support for the blaster shell itself). The notable “gimmick” of the Select is the ability to select which magazine to fire from; moving the forward grip slides the magazine carriage from side to side (simply pushing the carriage also works).

Standard Ultra darts, at least over the chronograph I was using, averaged 94fps, while the new design averaged 103fps.Now, the Ultra Select is silently releasing, but (within reason) meeting those expectations, two years later. Check American Foam’s YouTube channel for his thoughts on the blaster once he’s put it through paces, then I can get the blaster (and darts) back to see what happens.