Dart Zone Toy Fair 2023: New Darts are “Chalked” and More from the Showroom Floor!

Alright, Nerfers! It’s time for New York Toy Fair 2023 and we’re off to a good start with a tour of the Dart Zone Toy Fair 2023 Booth! Now, despite living in NYC, I didn’t actually get to go this year — but here’s to next year! I’ve visited the guys at the Dart Zone Toy Fair booth a few times before and they are great guys and a good representation of the company as a whole.

Dart Zone Tags Powder Marker Darts

Live from the Dart Zone Toy Fair booth, we learned the company is producing a very unique type of new foam dart. Available in both long or short dart form factors, the new Tags Darts have a dart head that is loaded with powder. When you tag out an opponent, it imprints a bit of powder onto their clothing. This is irrefutable evidence of a tag and would be useful for anyone trying to argue a tag.

The full length standard sized darts can fire 7 shots before you have to reload the powder and the half-lengths can be shot 4 times before they’re empty. These darts are interesting, for sure, but I don’t know how widespread general consumer interest will be in this item. It wouldn’t surprise me if these are the official darts at the next Dart Zone Pro Tournament though!

Dart Zone Pro MK4 Limited Editions..?!

If you look closely at any footage from the Dart Zone Toy Fair booth, you might notice something shiny in the background. That’s right, Dart Zone is making two different Dart Zone Pro MK4 limited edition dart blasters. One in GOLD, like the old Nexus Pro Midas Edition, and a metallic red version that will be used as giveaways at any Nerf War or blaster event Dart Zone might be at, like FoamCon. The Gold MK4 will be a Black Friday exclusive and there are said to be only 28 in existence, so that kinda kills the excitement for this one, doesn’t it?

New High-Accuracy Attachments??

Another item on display at the Dart Zone Toy Fair booth was an injection-molded bearing SCAR! A SCAR, or technically BCAR in this case, is a muzzle device that you attach to your blaster to increase the accuracy.

A SCAR muzzle device attaches to your barrel and induces a dart spin to increase accuracy in flight trajectory, just like a rifled barrel in a real firearm. A SCAR barrel uses string to induce dart spin, while a BCAR using small metal or plastic bearings to create the same effect. There are also PCARs which use a 3D printed rifling to impart dart spin.

One of the main complaints with the Dart Zone Pro MK4 was that you couldn’t attach a SCAR muzzle device to its extended barrel attachment, so it will be interesting to see if they’d addressed that issue with these BCARs. If they haven’t, this is just going to give people a bigger reason to complain or just forego the extended barrel attachment entirely.

Dart Zone Omnia Pro Fixed?

It has been reported that the Dart Zone Max Omnia Pro has had its launch issues fixed. If you weren’t aware, the Dart Zone Omnia had a very disastrous release when it first came out. The Omnia was plagued with many issues including firing delay or trigger lag, and misaligned flywheels which caused the blaster to be completely inaccurate and unreliable.

It’s good to see a fix! And although they were on display at the Dart Zone Toy Fair booth, I’m not sure anyone actually tested the newly fixed Omnia blaster out. Bummer.

Stranger Things Dart Blasters

Of course the new Stranger Things dart blasters were on display! The Dart Zone Toy Fair booth had the strangest new dart blasters including the Demogorgon Blaster and the Babysitter’s Bat Blaster.

This isn’t entirely new News though as these blasters are already up and available for pre-order at Walmart, but they are certainly something to look at!

Dart Zone Toy Fair 2023 Recap

So, that was all for this one folks. Hopefully next year I’ll be there live and direct like I used to be in the past. (Edit: OR then again, maybe not.)What was your favorite product they demoed at the booth this year? For me, it’s probably the new BCAR muzzle devices. I’d say the MK4 Special Editions, but… I’m probably never going to get my hands on those!

Thanks for reading, see you in the next one, peace!