My 'new' high capacity mag pouches have sold better than I thought they would. I say 'new' because the original Talon shingle pouch design was always designed to be scalable. I've done large capacity pouches as a one off in the past but never fleshed the full Etsy listing out until now.
The above pouches are three deep for a total of 12 and 9 magazines respectively. I got buried in orders pretty quickly for them which is nice but it did cause me to pause for reflection for a moment.
I've been in this business nearly 15 years in various shapes and roles. I still have my 18 dart magazines from the great Tesco 50p per mag and 18 darts fire sale back in 2013 as it was the only way to get a decent amount of magazines. The fact there is demand for high capacity mag holders tells us how far we've come. To have that supply chain for our own magazines available seperately and have them available in four continents with that sustained demand is a good thing.
The above represents how silly things can get if you load up a tac vest properly. Take the two pouches on the floor to represent the player's drop-leg mounted panels, you've got the potential for 102 Talon magazines and a sidearm on that pictured rig. And this was just orders placed in red fabric over 3 days. That's 1530 potential darts in those magazines. Each 12 dart pouch weighs 1.2kg so that's 9.6kg of pure mag and pouch before darts which, at 1g each, would represent another 1.5kg. Truly a mobile ammo depot!
These magazine holders also represent the upper end of magazine carriage that you'd realistically need for in game. Heck, you could even go as far as argue that you could put one of these on the outside of your day bag to carry all the mags you need for a day's play. Most BritNerfers I speak to cap out at 12+1 for a magazine load. You start adding multiples of these and you're into heavy and super heavy carriage territory which isn't really common. I've already advised one user that, actually, more smaller pouches is better since it gives load out flexibility that you wouldn't otherwise have with a single, large, fixed pouch.
However, there is always that note of caution. The risk of evolution in hobbies to cater to the deep, hard core nerds risks new entrants. Events have struggled UK side since COVID with lots of good venues being lost and good game organisers stepping away for a variety of personal reasons. Both are life blood resources to the community. In seeing the demand for these pouches sounded a bit of a warning bell for me, personally as a reminder to ensure that we don't lose sight of that entry level. There's not a great deal I can do from a tactical gear manufacturing perspective since gear is always the last thing a person buys. I know a couple of GOs that have started gathering loaner tac gear but they're in the minority. Instead, we need to remember to hug our GOs and keep one eye out for good venues and be good guests when we're there. I was out of the playing side of the hobby for a while and have dearly missed it.
There will be more 'new' products for 2024. I need to finally get my friction fit magazine pouches out and probably a few other things, too. I've cut all the fabric for my personal 130FPS freshed load out and ordered the remainder of the materials this evening. There will be more on that next week after I've had my Warhammer 40k weekend and next day job shift block.
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