5 posts tagged “reviews”
Brothers is one of the top 1.4g companies around, so I wasn't the only one excited to see the 2008 products announced a couple days ago. [Thanks to leeca for uploading the videos and the picture on the right] We are obviously going just on video now, but we can get a pretty good idea of what things will look like in person when they get to the US. Of the 2007 products I've seen in person, they were all quite good. Leeca has posted the videos here and pictures of the print catalog here.
The most obvious thing is Brothers belated entry into Saturn Missile Batteries. For some reason they have never made them in the past, but now they have added eight new ones, five of which are 500g, with up to 805 shots. I don't really like SMBs because I don't like whistle, but they can be used effective sometimes. At least even the high shot count ones here shoot fast, ending in around a minute and a half. The other nice thing is that some have effects besides just whistle to report, such as some color glitter and crackling. I still probably won't get any...
200g
Like last year, there aren't very many new 200g, which is too bad, because they make good ones, and 200g are often overlooked by "serious" 1.4g consumers. Last year I was excited about Red Light Green Light, Luck O The Irish, the Accelerate assortment, Bubbles and Suds, and Sabertooth.
I'm not too excited about the other new 200g. I like that Starring is a multilevel cake, but it is way too much crackle. Instant Replay looks like a solid performer and reminds me of PYK Cosmic Raider, but again it is a lot of crackle. Sweet Betsy is the only other 200g of note, because of the falling leaves, which you don't usually see (especially in 200g). Falling leaves can be cool, but I put them in the same category as fish; kind of neat, but a limited budget is better spent on other items.
500g
Like last year, Brothers has put out a good number of strong 500g cakes. Too many 9-shots in my opinion, but also some nice 12-shots and others.
Loco Motion - Another of my favorite new cakes. Angled mines, plus breaks with falling leaves. The pacing and color both look very good, but why the crackle finale?!?!
Vengeful Texan - The first three shots are awesome, pretty much just what I wanted in 500g cake #2 in this post. The rest of the cake, however, is not so exciting. There is a lot of variety, including the "effect of the year" twice and decent three-shot groups, but it can't live up to those first three shots.
There are two interesting high shot count cakes this year. I gave Torrent the "WTF award" in my notes for the piontless whistling rockets (what is this, an SMB) that just slow the thing down while doing basically nothing. The breaks are probably pretty small, but the angling and fans actually look pretty cool. The other is the awkwardly named frwrX. I like the comets a lot, and the breaks seem decent.
Ten is a solid looking 9-shot, but nothing too special, and Brothers NOABs tend to get beaten by a couple other brands (though Quake was very impressive and packed 4/1). James Bomb is an interesting effect, but it doesn't look like a 9-shot and will probably cost far more than it is worth.
Other
Brothers continues to innovate in fountains, with the very cool and creative Dark Science, which has a ball spinning in the center while fountains shoot out the top. I just wish the ball didn't end before the fountains, it is a little anticlimactic. Crescent Moon is the other noteworthy one because it actually waves back and forth with the moon shaped packaging. Panic Button looks like a fun little helicopter. The only new shell kit is Showdown, a giant kit with too many multibreaks and an annoying mix of 1.75" and 1.5" shells. The single and double breaks look nice, but I'd avoid this one. Overall while I'm not as excited as I was for the 2007 products, Brothers has shown they can consistently put out quality products, as well as creative ones.
Yesterday was the Wolverine demo, which consisted of all their 1.4g items (50 cues), plus 40 cues of 1.3g, which included cakes, candles, mines and shells. I’ll post on the overall demo itself next (my first 1.3g shoot!), but I’ll review all the 1.4g stuff here so that post doesn’t get too long… Overall I wasn’t very impressed with the 200g stuff (but there are a few good ones) while most of the 500g stuff is pretty good, with a few I’d definitely want to use in a show. A lot of their new items have strong breaks, they even note on one item in the video page that “We had to confirm this wasn’t broke with FLASH!” So I’m not giving anything away by mentioning it…
Videos of everything here can be found on their site. I’m too lazy to include pictures in this post, so just look there for your visual stimulation…
200g Cakes
Golden Willows – Very nice cake, with charcoal tails to nice golden breaks with red, green or blue stars in each shot. I like the color mixed in, and I think I’d take these over Matrix Pyro if I had the choice (admittedly different effects, but both 16 shot 200g willows with color). The only thing I would change is make the last four shots fire in a volley.
Crackling Cherry Tracers – Just kind of generic, lots of crackle and then some kind of out of place swimming pearls.
Evil Clown – Has both fan and vertical shots, lots of variety and color. With so many effects in one cake it would be hard to work into a show without just looking chaotic (not always a bad thing), but it is a solid cake.
Rip-Snort – Weak and bare breaks fired in groups of five, I wouldn’t bother with this one.
Swimming Pearls – A perfectly executed effect, these things have nice tails and really travel, and the last few shots are fired in volleys. Definitely a great cake if you are looking for these effect.
Rainbow Crunch - Good pace with crakle and pearls with strong colors firing above the layer of crackle.
Jimmy Crack Corn – Not bad, but nothing special.
Frost Burn with Pearls – Small mines, nothing special.
Blue Pearl with Gold Strobe Tail – The tails aren’t as long as I would like, but it is a good single-effect cake.
Blue Tie with Brocade Mine – The mines are pretty weak, but the blue pearls are decent.
Hummer – Not really anything to look at, but very good if you like the humming sound produced.
Misc.
Ice Flower Fountain – Good mixed-effect fountain with strangely long delays between each tube.
Whiplash Mines – Single shot mines with breaks. I wasn’t very impressed with these, and would stick to Critical Acclaim or the Cannon Assorted Mines.
X01 Shells – Hard, good size breaks, but not much variety in effects.
X02 Shells – Again, hard breaks, but a bit sloppy (unavoidable with canister shells) and all peonies except a crackle. The colors are pretty good, but they don’t have that many stars in them.
500g Cakes
Flying Fish with Zoom Power – Better than I expected, nice colors on the fish, though I think they overused the swimming pearls, I’d rather see more fish or the crackling comets.
Screamin’ Meemie – Aaaaah, the swimming pearls are back! A couple nice fans, and fairly small but hard breaks. Good show in a box type cake.
Coconut Rings – Out of 30 shots, I don’t think I saw one properly formed ring, I wouldn’t bother with this cake.
Dahlias & Bouquets – The mines are weak, but the breaks have very nice colors in them.
Thug – Weak mines again, but the rest of the breaks are pretty good, though not a standout.
Snap! Crackle! Boom! – The glitter breaks in this one were pretty good, as were the pearls with crackle, overall solid cake.
Nine – Nice big chrysanthemums and peonies, though I don’t know if they warrant NOAB prices.
3” Brocade Willows – Same as above, nice breaks, but I’d probably stick to 12 shot 500g cakes that come packed 4/1.
Gimmie Shimmy – One of the best cakes of the night, I liked this one a lot. The glittering willows looked nice and the serpents worked well.
Falling Water Chutes – Nice waterfalls, but looked a little bare. Maybe this is unavoidable, so I’d definitely shoot this in at least pairs if I had it.
Shred – 360 shot z-cake of red white and blue with reports. Apparently it was supposed to fire in 30sec, but when they arrived, they are a minute, which is way too slow. The fusing was also inconsistent, starting and stopping.
Tatt – Nice hard breaks, mixed effects, solid cake.
Rings – Decent rings, but a nothing special. Black Cat Ringleader is better for this effect.
Yin-Yang – Beautiful cake with glittering tails in different colors.
H2O – Great cake, nice z-pattern of blue mines with waterfalls above, but it’s short!
Trippin’ – More swimming pearls, this time with crackling tails. The breaks are a little small and nothing special.
Colorful Carnie – Nice colors in the mines, followed by decent fans of white chrysanthemums and soft crackle. Solid cake, but nothing special.
Pyro Picasso – If you want some crackle with color, this is a great one. I’d definitely like to get a couple of these, though the glittering palm volley at the end is a little small.
So that is it. Overall a solid line so far, and gettnig better, if thise years new stuff is any indication. There are a few I'd love to have, especially Golden Willows, Swimming Pearls, Pyro Picasso, Yin-Yang, Gimmie Shimmy, and Flying Fish with Zoom Power.
Yeah, these videos got uploaded a while ago, but whatever. I've only shot a couple Winda items in person, but they were good, and those that have shot others say good things about them. They have a lot of new stuff that looks excellent, with some very nice professional looking 500g and even solid new 200g, and area many manufacturers seem to be ignoring these days. Here are the ones that look the best to me, judging from the videos. You can't always be sure of how it will look in person, but Winda seems to be pretty good about consistency and doesn't zoom in on videos to make them look bigger like some companies.
Missile Machine (200g) - Watching this 180 shot z-cake, it's hard to believe it is only 200g! The speed and noise make it seem like a lot more, and they really get all the performance they can out of it. A group of these would be great, and probably far cheaper than using 500g cakes. Combing a few with Fireworks Fiestas would make a nice combo of noise and tails, all with 200g cakes.
Tricky Bomb (200g) - For the last 200g on my list, Tricky Bomb is a nice busy cake with 15 shots of crackling tails to color peonies with popcorn crackle. Very noisy and busy, a couple of these would be great in a crackle segment of a show.
Robots Return (500g) - I like this one mainly because I like mines, but it is solid all around. Starting with color and gold crackling mines, the cake then fires two rows of shells, first glitter, then nice glittering willows.
Extreme Madness (500g) - You want crackle? 50 shots of fanned crakling tails to crackling shells would be a great way to make some noise. Even better would be to end it with an Extreme Machine (World Class) which has been "adjusted" to fire all 36 shots at once, as seen in this video.
The Best Partner (500g) - This one is just really weird. I don't really know how you would use it, but I'm sure it would get a reaction out of the audience.
The Giant (500g) - Another nice professional looking one, this alternates charcoal tail crossetes to crackling tips and white palms. I wish there were color tips and the random shell in the last volley didn't make any sense (maybe a mistake?), but it is a nice, well executed effect.
Deadly Bomber (500g) - This 35 shot z-pattern cake fires shells with mixed peony (almost looks like crossettes) with glitter, including a nice yellow, then a kind of weak last group of peony shells. Overall a great sky filler with nice color.
Magnum Power (500g) - Another perfectly timed cake, this one fires mines up the center at the same time as nice shells in a v-shape that are spaced just right when they break. The last volley is a little weak, but other than that, this one is great and shows the quality work Winda is doing.
So those are my highlights for the new Winda products. I probably included about half of them in this list, but I guess that just shows how nice their stuff is. I'd just at the chance to get any of these, but sadly Winda isn't all that common in my part of the country, so I'll have to keep my eyes open!
As I mentioned in my last post, I'm a bit behind, but I still want to post about new 1.4g for 2007. As one of the top brands, Brothers is always something to look forward to, and 2007 has been no exception. They are leaning heavy on 500g cakes (but who isn't?), but also making great use of glitter and less common colors. They also have a lot of 500g "show in a box" type cakes (Alcatraz, Big Top, etc) that I'm not a fan of, but are good for the general consumer market. Here are some of the best ones in my opinion. (the frames below from the demo videos are pretty close to full res already, sorry they aren't better quality.)
Moonlighting (left) - One of my favorites of all the new stuff. Alternating z-cake tailed stars with nice colors and fanned volleys of nice glitter, ending with a big finale of red to crackle. There is perhaps too much crackle in the new stuff (again, who isn't doing that?), but I'll excuse it in this one. Overall this is a great mix of a good z-cake and a nice fan cake, I'd say it gets close to Big Troops for top z-cake, although Big Troops is a more tradtional high speed/shot cake. I say get them both!
Accelerate - Brothers hasn't totally forgotten 200g cakes this year! This is a selection of three cakes (Kick it Up, Rev it Up, Speed it Up) with 13 shots each (including angled finales), and a large variety of effects between them; chrysanthemums, glitter, crackle, fish, whistles, peony to sizzle. If you got a case of 12, firing each in a group of four would be awesome!
The New Hotness (right) - Now this is a great innovative effect! Five shells fire at a time, three colored pearls going up the center to distract you, and two fire out to the sides. The center shells break to color effects and the side shells surprise you with huge (and nicely symmetrical) dragon egg shells. See Winda's Bull Fight, if not a straight rewrap, it has the same basic effect.
Burning Wind (below) - Now here is an elegant and colorful cake. There aren't that many crossete cakes, the main one is Black Cat's Atom Splitter, which is nice, but is just red and gree with no other effects. There is also Blown Away by United Pyro, with a similar effect to Burning Wind, but I've never seen it listed on any price lists, so it might be impossible to find. Anyway, Burning Wind has great colored crossetes with colored glitter in the center, I especially like seeing the yellow. Two at once would look great, especially the finale.
Gamma Glow - Nothing revolutionay, but a solid cake that would be great in any show. This one has nice chrysanthemums to crackle, popcorn crackle (eh, it's not too bad in this one) and a surprisingly nice four shot finale of willows to crackle.
Nerve Center (below) - This one has pretty good "peony to sizzle" (at least that's what I'm calling it...) effects, but the real highlight is the nice finale volley of a group of red pearls and green tailed pearls ending in falling leaves. The timing and rising effects look great, I'd love to see it done with other types of breaks.
Blackout, FPS, and Riot Act (below) - I am grouping all of these together because they are all 25+ shot fan cakes with nice glitter and colors. FPS is nice for the overlapping colors and tremelon and red strobe finale. Blackout starts with the same nice shells FPS ends on, then has chrysanthemum to crackle, some very nice blue and red glitter and strobes, and ends on crakling flowers. Riot Act includes nice glitter mines, glitter shells, willow and red stars to nice silver glittering willows, and a finale of green glitter with glittering gold willows.
Major Mojo (below) - This one has fanned strobes and color glitter, so it partly fits with the last group, but I made it seperate because it starts with serpents, and includes a great aqua color that is very rare in fireworks. Too bad they had to use so much crackle in this cake...
For no discernable reason, they divided their products into three lines, Wolverine West, Geisha, and Fireplug, but for simplicty, they are all Wolverine.
Most of their product line sadly isn't too impressive, with small breaks and few interesting effects. I saw a few live at the 2006 WA group shoot (my write-up here) and while they were ok, it wasn't anything special. Others have said the same, and most of the videos don't look much better. A couple I think look decent are Rainbow Crunch, with a z-pattern of nice color pearls and crackle (good for layering, maybe combining with something like Tricky Bomb) and Evil Clown, which has great variety, especially for a 200g. Swimming Pearls is also nice if you like the effect, but it's not my thing.
So those two are the only ones I'd really be interested in, but all is not lost! The new products for 2007 actually do seem to live up to their amibitious motto.
Gimmie Shimmy is a very nice 500g (with a funny label) that alternates nice hard breaking glittering willows, the same stars in a z-pattern, and cool spinners. A nice mix of effects, and the willows are fantastic. [They aren't really typical "willows" but I'm not sure of a better name for them.]
Ying Yang is another nice 500g, this one in their "prox grade" series, that features z-patter mines with more of their great red and white glitter. Two of these would look amazing if followed up with four or so of their single shot 200g batteries with the same effect. They have white, red and green, though I'd just stick to the white and red. In any case, these quality single effect cakes certainly live up to their motto.
H2O (left) and Falling Water Shutes are two 500g cakes that just go perfectly together. H2O has z-pattern blue mines to "horsetail" waterfalls, while Falling Water Shutes has fuller waterfalls. There are only a couple other waterfall cakes out there, so both are great additions to the 1.4g world. I would fire them at the same time, with Falling Water Shutes filling out a nice background of soft golden waterfalls while the breaks from H2O stand out more.
So that's it for Wolverine for now. The old stuff wasn't too exciting, but if they keep this up, they will build up a great line of products actually designed with the serious pyro in mind. Because they do 1.3g shoots in my area and somebody else from PyroU already shoots with them, I'm hoping to hook up with them this summer to provide some free labor in exchange for getting some 1.3g experience. I hope it works out!
[And yeah, the new 2007 cakes came out a couple months ago, I just haven't gotten around to posting about them until now, just like 206/2007 New Years displays... I will hopefully get to the new stuff from Brothers, Cannon, Forward, Winda, and maybe others, there is some nice new stuff!]
