Gears mounted on either side of the plunger allow you to trade a long priming distance for a shorter prime of a beefy spring. Internally, the Helios is what you’d expect. If you want faster rate of fire, you’ll have to upgrade to more expensive (and electric) Rival blasters. In addition, proficient use can average 2 balls per second when it comes to the rate of fire. That’s a respectable velocity you’d expect from Rival, which usually claims “up to 100fps”. In testing, the Helios averaged 96fps with the included balls. It’s simply a matter of how the blaster works, and operating it as intended. Anything different can cause the internal “barrel” to get stuck trying to squish a Rival round, leading to the user needing to unjam the mechanism. The loading mechanism usually works flawlessly, provided you either let the breech return naturally or (if you’re not one to let go of the priming handle) push it back back fast enough to match. The Helios is an easy to use blaster, with one caveat. The blaster comes with a single, seven-round magazine. Note also the spring return on the priming handle, an improvement over the Apollo’s stiff priming hook.Ī single Rival rail sits on top of the blaster, to use with various accessories. The safety switch sits on both sides, allowing for ambidextrous use.Īlso allowing ambidextrous use is the priming handle, which is a separate piece that can be inserted (and removed) on either side of the blaster, simply by pulling back a button on the priming sled. A priming indicator also sits at the rear, showing the orange plunger when the blaster is ready to fire. The back of the blaster is thick and curved, allowing use as a shoulder stock. It has a large handle, due to it also serving as the magazine well. The Helios shares the same solid, no-nonsense blaster body design as other Rival blasters. Note that this blaster came from Canada, where it is already on Walmart store shelves. It demands a bit of patience in operation, but otherwise is a reliable, smaller spring-powered primary. The Helios is, as you’d expect, a respectable update to the original Apollo design. Now that the new colors are coming to store shelves (and appearing at Toy Fair), I’m going to fix that. Somehow, despite buying one and taking pictures, I never actually got around to writing a review. The full image gallery for Helios XVIII-700 may be viewed at Helios XVIII-700/Gallery.The Helios has been on shelves for a while now, as a Phantom Corps addition to the Rival line.
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