The Water Warriors Tarantula is Buzz Bee Toys' latest motorized water blaster offering. Like the Water Warriors Scorpion, the Tarantula comes with its own rechargable battery pack and charger and offers hand-pumpless soaking capability. Unlike the Water Warriors Scorpion, the Tarantula does not have a separate Hydro Power PC, rather it relies solely on its pump to generate the force behind its stream.

The Blaster ::

Nozzle ::

The Tarantula features one, standard-sized nozzle (roughly equivalent to a Super Soaker XP 70 in size and performance). Streams produced by the Water Warriors Tarantula have a decent lamination and strength behind them, but overall power due to its limited stream size seems on the lower side of the soaker spectrum.

Pump ::

The Tarantula features a motorized pump. Unlike the Water Warriors Scorpion, the Tarantula's pump is fully responsible for generating the force behind the exiting stream. Thankfully, unlike pulsating streams produced by the majority of motorized soakers released in the 1980s, the stream from the Tarantula is quite smooth and continuous. However, like the older water blasters of the 1980s, though stronger, the pump can only sustain a smaller stream relative to many of the separate pressure chamber blasters on the market.

There is no on/off switch on the Tarantula. The pump is activated and shut off simply by pulling or releasing the trigger. The rechargable battery pack is a nice addition and appears to provide a long amount of usage time (though exact duration of a full charge has not been fully tested). A single charge can easily supply enough power to empty a full reservoir several times, though.

Triggers / Grip ::

The trigger and grip area of the Tarantula is functional and accomodating to most sized hands except for particularly large ones. The trigger, itself, pulls smoothly, activating the motor. The motor also comes to a stop virtually immediately upon release of the trigger. It should be noted that it is possible to pull the trigger slightly such that the nozzle valve partially opens without activating the motor; though possible, this property neither adversely affects nor leads to any notable advantage. As with other Water Warrior blasters, the trigger can be pulled to open the nozzle to varying degrees. However, as the stream is generated through the motor, the actual stream performance is not affected significantly.

The Reservoir ::

The Tarantula holds a surprising amount of water for a blaster of its size. The additional room for water likely arises from the fact that the motor takes up much less space than a separate pressure chamber would. Despite feeling a little top-heavy when full, the Tarantula is generally well balanced at varying degrees of full. The intake for the pump seems to be slightly forward in the reservoir, yet there is no visible intake tube leading towards the rear of the reservoir. Due to the internal shape of its base, there will undoubtedly be a little bit of unusable water remaining in the reservoir when water level gets low. This is, thankfully, a rather small percentage of the total reservoir volume and is not too wasteful.

The top-mounted tethered cap secures well and is easy to remove and replace as necessary.

Overall ::

As a whole, the Water Warriors Tarantula is a good, light, manual-pump-free blaster. Thanks to its motor, the can continuously blast for over a minute should the situation call for such a prolonged attack. As well, being relatively light, it is easy to use single-handedly, thus opening up the possibility of using two blasters at the same time; the Tarantula would also make for a great back-up blaster. Of course, being tied to battery power, there is still the possibility of running out of charge, though this is unlikely if the battery pack is freshly charged; the battery pack supplies enough juice for several reservoir-full reloads (total number of refills on a single charge remains unknown). The main drawback is the Tarantula's limited output, being only equivalent to a Super Soaker XP 70's stream. As such, while it can continuously fire longer than most hand-pumped soakers, it can easily be overpowered by a number of higher-output/higher-powered blasters.

Pros

Nice styling, clean lines, and good solid feel to the soaker. Pump free use and balanced design allows for possibilities of using multiple blasters simultaneously. Rechargable battery pack offers multiple-fills worth of charge. Good reservoir size.

Cons

Relies on motor to generate stream; lack of charge means no more stream. Relatively small output for a blaster its size; no nozzle selection. No strap.

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Related Content .:

 Product Listing Page | Water Warriors Product Evolution Tree 

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