For over two years now, Transformers have lived among us, their arrival changed our way of life and we have come to accept their presence, adopting their technology for our own so that we may ascend to a higher purpose. With their arrival, the Autobots and the Decepticon divided the MK23 population, creating followers dedicated to one or the other, with each side claiming to be the true choice! Whilst the answer has never been decisive, there was no argument that the Transformer's have been God's among men in their time among us... or Hop Rubbers.

We are of course really talking about the Transformer series of GBB Hop Up rubber buckings from Maple Leaf which have rampantly been taking over the internals of MK23's in the community for nearly two years now. Their success has been undeniable, in part due to the rapid word of mouth spreading this success, but without a doubt due to truly game changing performance increase users have seen following their installation. It would not be a long stretch to assume that most current MK23 users in the community have one of the Transformer series hop rubbers installed in their pistols. However, like some God's throughout history, the strongest of these ultimately fall to a newer, stronger power. History looks like it may be repeating itself...

Behold, the age of the Superheroes.

Presenting:

(Sourced from Maple Leaf)... Newly designed evolutionary pressure points to increase the stability of the initial BB speed, reducing the positive and negative variance, and to stabilize the muzzle velocity.

Continuation of the previous design advantages of the Transformers HOP rubber, with changes to ensure high-level focus on effective positioning, whilst improving the result of the ballistic hit rate.

Includes a special stainless steel C ring, C type elastic design to effectively lock the HOP rubber, and ensure airtight seal.

Design Features (SUPER):

●Single point positioning precision mound, precision shooting

● Outer ribs to painlessly accommodate VFC / Umarex brand GBB gas rifles.

● Keep the stainless steel C-ring airtight design, players can choose whether to install according to the gun type or demand

● Internal exclusive pressure point design re-evolution

● Suitable for WE/Marui / KJ /VFC gas pistol / GBB gas rifle series

● Suitable for VSR10 Hand-pull air sniper gun series Design Features (WONDER):

● Two point positioning wide mound, extended range shooting

● Outer ribs to painlessly accommodate VFC / Umarex brand GBB gas rifles.

● Keep the stainless steel C-ring airtight design, players can choose whether to install according to the gun type or demand

● Internal exclusive pressure point design re-evolution

● Suitable for WE/Marui / KJ /VFC gas pistol / GBB gas rifle series

● Suitable for VSR10 Hand-pull air sniper gun series

It is recommended to use the following color bucking for a specific muzzle velocity:

Green 50° is suitable for initial speed 110m/s or less

Yellow 60° for initial speed 90~120m/s

Blue 70° for initial speed 110~140m/s

Red 75° is suitable for initial speed 130~150m/s

Black 80° Applicable strength Muzzle velocity 150m/s or more

So now that we know the names of our new Gods, what do we know about them that gives us any indication that they might be powerful and worthy enough to follow over their Transformer counterparts? And more importantly whether we should start ripping out our old, trusty buckings, and installing these new ones in our MK23s?

Without getting out hands on these buckings yet (we are changing that very quickly), it's a little difficult to give you a scientific answer until rounds have left the barrels of our MK23's, however, we can however theorize based on the intelligence we have available to us at the moment. Lets take a look at some more images, starting with the SUPER bucking.

As you can see in this first image, the bucking has been inverted so that the mound is clearly exposed for our viewing pleasure. There are a few things that are critical to observe here.

1 - The addition of a ridge to the entrance of the bucking lip. This ridge forms a lip that serves as a seal that surrounds the nozzle on one side as it delivers the BB, then holds the BB in place between the hop mound as propellant is delivered in to the hop rubber. The entrance to the lips is less flared too compared to the Transformer rubber, which should provide tighter fit to the nozzle. This seal will help stabilize the shot as well as ensure as little of the propellant escapes from the rear of the hop rubber as the BB is propelled forward and energy is transferred to the BB before the nozzle travels back to a neutral position. We should expect to see a noticeable increase in FPS when using this bucking over it's Transformer predecessor. Our guess is a figure around 20 - 35 FPS.

2 - Window locating nubs. Parallel to center hop mound are what appear to be the addition of two barrel window locating nubs. The suspicion here is that these window locating nubs will help to ensure that the hop mound is placed exactly in the center of the barrel window to ensure precision placement and contact with the BB as it passes through and over the mound. We are uncertain whether these window locating nubs will transition well over to stock barrel windows or non-Maple Leaf barrels, but the assumption here is that these nubs will work perfectly with existing Maple Leaf barrels like the Precision or Crazy Jet series. Expect to see improved shot to shot stability from the reduced mound movement provided by these window locating nubs.

3 - Mound redesign.

This is the real meat of the changes over the Transformer bucking. The mound design seems to have been completely bulked up, with it's surface area width having been greatly increased to provide even more surface contact with the BB. The shape of the mound seems to retain it's concave curvature which brought the original fame to the Maple Leaf rubbers (back then known as the Diamond and Delta). The ramp to the mound seems to be have been narrowed and smoothed up in to a more determined point of BB entry, as if to help guide the BB in to position and eliminate the chance of movement getting on to the mound itself. With the ramp being narrower, you can see that Maple Leaf have been able to apply the concave curve earlier to the mound as well, which we will no doubt see impressive improvements from as this directly translates to more contact time with the BB, and therefore hop effect. Connected to the mound ramp, there appears to be yet another ridge which encircles the entrance to the mound. This ridge likely serves to make contact with the BB and stabilize it's transition on to the hop mound as well as providing additional seal to prevent propellant from passing around the BB as it moves in to position. With the SUPER mound, like the DECEPTICON bucking before it, it uses a single point of last contact with the BB. The science behind this is supposedly to gradually reduce contact with the BB as it leaves the mound to prevent as little disruption to the BB flight as possible before travelling down the barrel. This, as Maple Leaf claims, should be the choice of mound if the user is looking for greater accuracy results.

With the SUPER out of the way, we can take a peak at the WONDER variant.

What's clear to see from these images is that for the most part, all of the points raised when looking over the SUPER bucking seem to transferable to the WONDER bucking, with the exception of the double point mound design. The double point of last contact with the BB is supposed to ensure that the last bit of gradual contact with the mound is applied to either side of the BB in attempt to prolong the stability of the BB flight so that it can reach greater distances over the single point of contact in the SUPER. Again, this is something that is up to quite a bit of debate with the current Transformer generation of buckings, and is something that we imagine will transfer over to these new Superhero buckings too. Based on the continuation of the bucking colors, it looks like Maple Leaf have continued to use the existing range of shore hardness in these new rubbers, which, translating to MK23 users, will likely mean that the "go to" 50 degree rubbers will still remain king, although if 80 degrees takes your fancy, the option will remain.

Naturally, we are also very keen to see how these new buckings synergize with the community staple upgrades offered by Hadron Airsoft Designs. Namely, the TDC, H-Plate and the new FANG plate, the later of which we can only imagine will enhance the Superhero buckings to even greater levels.

So with this all said and done, we need only wait for the community to start acquiring these rubbers and for results to start pouring in. We will of course conduct our own tests, both short term and long term, and hope to provide some clarity on whether we look to these Superheroes as the new Gods, or whether the Transformers will remain supreme. But for now, only time will tell who will walk out from the dust.

The SUPER and WONDER superhero series buckings are available now, exclusively at Skirmshop UK. You can find the whole range listings on their store via the button below:

Discount code: onmymk