As I looked out at the summer rain today, I pondered what to do with my young grade school boys.  Looks like it’s time to break out the bow and arrow and do a bit of indoor archery practice! No, I’m not crazy, but I recently got a hold of some of the kid-friendly bow and arrow toys made by Zing Toys.

For today’s rainy day, I was thinking of their “Zano Bow”, a small plastic bow made specifically for indoor play.  The Zano is about a foot long and comes with two suction cup arrows.  The claim is a range of 30 feet.  However, even if one can set up a 30 foot section of their house, moderately high ceilings may be needed to stretch out all 30 feet.  Low ceilings may also limit range.  Regardless, the range of the bow is quite acceptable for indoor play.   The bow comes with two suction cup arrows that seem to hold up to the claim they will stick to most any flat surface.  Arming the bow is easy, as the custom arrows have little “hooks” on either side of the suction cup.  These hooks then grab ahold of two stretchy plastic loops in the middle of the bow that are attached to longer bands spanning the length of the bow.  These provide the power for launching.  This is great for making the bow easy to use, but I suspect it would be extremely hard to jury-rig a replacement if they were overstretched and broke.  The plastic bow does bend a bit when put under heavier stress so that will help ease the danger of breaking any loops.  (I haven’t seen them break yet, so that’s a very good sign.)  I would have reservations for the plastic bow for heavy use by older kids (college dorm, perhaps?), but it should hold up pretty well for the targeted age group (8-15yrs).  Another nice feature of the bow is its symmetry.  Since the top and bottom of the bow are the same, it is simple to turn it upside down so that it fully accommodates a left-handed shooter  When opening up the packaging be sure to save the back, as it is a ready-made target for indoor shooting.  I prefer a target I put together myself that is just a tad bigger, as it gives my younger archers a bit more wiggle room to try to “score points”.   At around $13 MSRP, I’m tempted to get another one so the two boys can have a head to head competition.  It would also solve the limited (2 shots) ammo problem as I haven’t been able to find any “extra ammo” packs for the Zano bow.

As a surprise for a non-rainy day, I’ve also obtained an Air Huntress Z-Curve bow.  Zing makes several types of each bow, and the Air Huntress line is all in pink and purple tones – presumably to piggyback on some of the female archery craze due to the Hunger Games movies.  (An “Air Hunterz” line has a similar line of bows in camo colors.)  The Z-Curve is the largest bow in the line and is almost twice as big as the Zano bow.  While I feel like I’m holding some sort of fragile toy when holding the Zano, the Z-Curve is large enough for me to feel comfortable shooting (although it’s obviously still small for an adult.)  The range of the bow is pretty good, while a really good shot might approach the claimed 125 feet, it can reliably go 50 feet even when shot by a fairly small child.  The bow comes with larger, but similar arrows to the Zano arrows.  These arrows also have the two front notches to hook onto the bow’s two stretchy loops.  Holding back the base of the arrow and letting go makes for surprising accuracy.  One suction cup arrow and two “whistling” arrows with soft tips are included.  There isn’t much to shoot at outside that will hold a suction cup, but the whistling arrows are fun.  When just three arrows aren’t enough, there are additional ammo packs for the Z-Curve for a little over $10.  The Z-Curve bow and 3 arrows run about $25 MSRP, a decent price for a fun little toy.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Zing’s nifty little rocket launcher called the X6 Zoom Rocketz (yes, the company has a “Z” complex.)  It isn’t a bow, but it is still some good fun.  It’s a slighly modified take on the old foot-compressor air powered rocket.  Stomp on a small plastic “bellows” to launch a rocket high in the air.  What is special about the X6, is its rotating launch pad which rotates a new rocket into place using some of the air blast to launch the previous rocket.  Thus, six rockets on the launch pad can be launched in quick succession.  At first, I was disappointed in the performance of the rockets.  While I, an adult, could somewhat reliably get a pretty good jet  of air to get a high arc, it was very difficult for my early grade school boys to launch them very high.  However, after an hour or so of play, they became practiced enough to get some very good results.  The package claims the rockets “blast up to 100 feet”, which might be possible if angled sideways, but that would be a very optimistic vertical performance.  Regardless, the rockets would easily go high enough to be entertaining (or get stuck on roofs and trees if one isn’t careful.)  The one flaw with the system is the rotating loader for the rockets.  Some launches performed fine, but did not trigger the rocket advance mechanism.  This was quickly rectified by simply smacking the launcher again (without a rocket) or by loading a rocket back on the current location and launching again.  Coming in at an MSRP of $30 it is just a tad pricey for what it provides, but I figure it comes close when I factor that it comes with six rockets.

Whether you’re shooting arrows inside, or doing some outdoor archery or rocketry, Zing has a pretty good lineup of toys at a reasonable price.  These are not toys that are going to become family heirlooms, but if not purposely abused they should last a couple of good seasons.

Tags: Unplugged