I don't know about their budget, but they're certainly pulling out the cheapness.
I finally got some of the Slingshock two-packs in the Cincinnati area, and I gotta admit I'm both elated and disappointed at once.
Hunter-S is made out of... something? It's clearly not rubber, but it doesn't feel like the plastic surrounding it either? It sucks terribly, but just what is this thing made out of? Also, why would you ever make this taller? It can catch the ridge just fine without the height. Flugel-S is so loose that I keep having issues with it switching to Slingshock mode mid-battle even if I launch it in the normal mode, and the same thing happens with my Fusion-S too despite having a different kind of mechanism. Fortunately this didn't carry over to Survive-S, even though it has the same kind of mode switcher as Flugel-S. Needle-S shouldn't even be classified as a Defense driver, it's that broken. Even in "normal" mode there's no way to actually spin on the ball, which means you're spinning exclusively on the guarding spikes at all times.
On the better side of things we have Xtend-S, which seems to behave pretty well in its standard form and exceeds the original Xtend. Not Xtend+, but it's still pretty good as far as Slingshock drivers go. Also in the maybe good pool is Wedge-S, which is basically a wide Survive with a metal edge. By far better than the original Wedge and is basically every hope I ever had about Wedge thrown into a single part. Liner-S is also surprising. It has some incredibly tight burst resistance with a strong spring and mostly acts like any regular Ball driver with an actually decent amount of Stamina power. Far less disappointing than I expected overall.
The layers have the same up-and-down problem. Galaxy Zeutron looks kinda ugly and lost its marbles, Crash Roktavor somehow got its wings locked in place (which was something I downright refused to believe, but can't really deny with it in my hands), and Spiral Treptune is missing a lot of painted details around the eyes on top of losing a bunch of weight due to its hollowness and lack of rubber. Oh yeah, and Guardian Kerbeus' orange paint is poorly applied and doesn't stay within its bounds.
On the plus side again, Hazard Kerbeus has better burst resistance, and... I guess the recolored dual layers kinda look neat with their unique thematic paint jobs of thorns, ice, volcanic ash, and literally just being gold? Man, Gold-X Betrometh really got the short end of the stick didn't it?
So... yeah. I like some of it, I don't like a lot more of it. Overall most happy about Kerbeus, which is pretty darned close and has an actually decent Slingshock driver and handily beats out all the others I got today with ease, although I really, really like Wedge-S and want to see what it can pull off too. My Wedge fanaticism is back baby!
Cincinnati-based Organizer, and owner of every single currently released TT Burst bey part in at least one color. Hard to think of anything I don't have from MFB either...