2015 BW12 "black green" Koosh Initial Test and thoughts

Back in December I posted about an update in the eBay seller beautifulwoman2012's listings for "koosh" darts, advertising "improved adhesive". I needed darts, so I put in an order on December 23, 2014 for 200 of these recently added forest green foam (called "black green" in the listing) darts. The shipment arrived today.

As usual, working tracking number, solidly boxed to prevent crushing, and shipping confirmation within a day or so of payment. No problems there.

10-round "clips" as always:

And the darts:

Nice foam color, huh? It isn't going to be the best for recovery, but anything other than elite noob blue is a welcome change.

Now to find some flaws!

Here's one of these BW12 greens next to a Yutoys blue:

The Yutoys foam is definitely denser and stiffer, and so is better Elite foam. That isn't promising.

Also, the diameter is on the low side. These were handled just fine by the Strongarm in the test shoot, so there should be no springer issues at least when new, but once worn, they may get iffy. Anything with a stock barrel and an AR is probably a bad idea.

The tips are the rubber variety (not the early-style slick vinyl), and are solidly glued on. As far as I can tell, the adhesive and process is the same as the Yutoys product.

Now for some speculation/inference. Some buyers have reported uncured glue as well as finding "slick tips" in their recent BW12 orders. These, however, are all older foam colors - Elite blue, and "apple green" (which recently sold out and was replaced with a new bright yellow). My guess is that old stock is still around, with or without the improved glue or process. I received zero slick tips in this case of "black green". The "black green", being a newer foam color to this dart, would not have any old stock.

I would rather have received slick tips, as I feel they are more accurate and reliable.

In the end, don't count on receiving rubber or slick tips for certain, and treat the "improved adhesive" advertising as a higher probability of receiving usable, durable darts that do not need tips glued.

Here is a foam cutting defect likely caused by the low-density foam:

Speaking of that, remember that my foam-related observations apply only to this forest green foam. All the other foams this dart is available with are unknown sources and production runs. Don't count on foam QC any more than you count on always receiving good glue or the tip type you want. This is a $0.10/round Chinese dart.

And here's a messy glue app, looks like this one missed the excess glue wiping process:

However, the cured glue is somewhat slick and doesn't cause malfunctions or hinder accuracy, so this is a non-defect in my book, just a bit sketchy.

Now this was weird. I used a newer 6-round magazine with a very strong spring and had this gnarly malfunction on the Vulture while testing some inner barrels with these.

"I fought the FKs, and the FKs won"

This was most definitely due to the weak foam getting rammed through the feed lips on that mag by the spring pressure. The dart somehow got wedged at an angle into the cage. This happened very fast and I immediately cleared the gun and retrieved this...

Said weak foam is yet to be combat tested. Being present in a magazine for hours under follower pressure and vibration during adverse environmental conditions could end in total HvZ disaster for all I know. But perhaps I am being alarmist. These ran just fine with 18-rounders. My instinct is that they will do just fine, but not live long, which may be OK with how quickly darts vanish in the field.

The test shoot produced some interesting results.

Chrono session

I haven't any magfed springers or Smart System guns handy to try at the moment, but the Strongarm did fine. The Tacmod, however, loved this ammo, and reached cleanly into the 120s with an average of 113FPS. Accuracy was, tentatively, slightly improved from the Yutoys product. It ran as nicely as anything I have ever used short of ZS Elite, too.

It does appear that the lighter foam is a ballistic benefit, and a smaller or less rigid foam doesn't have any significant effect on flywheel performance. The nicer-foamed Yutoys blue certainly didn't outshoot this dart.

Durability, however, was not the greatest. Some burn tracks appeared after the 10+ shots on these darts below. Again, this foam is just not up to par.

Foam quality is, however, my only real gripe with this dart, and again, remember that the other foam colors may be entirely different.

Perhaps someone can give yellow BW12 darts a shot or has already bought them and can report on their foam. And for that matter, how is recent BW12 blue?

This listing image seems to show a visible difference in diameter between blue and the other two colors.

(Footnote: Steer clear of using any koosh through a rifled inner barrel! That combo absolutely sucks. The Vulture with the rifled barrel I slapped in there was a ridiculous whirlybird machine until I put a cut down Rayven inner barrel in it!)