**UPDATED 2/18/8 - NOW MADE IN CHINA and I am no longer a DMI customer, which is sad because their initial product years ago was outstanding. I have "Amazon-Verified" purchased close to 200 or more of these boards over several years, so please take this as THE gospel review. Quick history: I first bought a DMI Bandit board in 2009, i was amazed at how beautiful it was. The quality was unmatched, and it literally still looks brand new today 9 years later (on and off light use). These were made in New Zealand at the time. The colors were crisp, had dense seamless sisal bristle pack with a baby soft face (yet incredibly durable and self healing), and the screenprint paint job was perfect with no dull spots or slop anywhere. Over the last year or so the quality, and quality control has completely failed beyond acceptable limits. In addition to the items I already described at length below, here are more of the latest problems. I started to notice very cheap looking and feeling sisal bristles, the surface of the bristles has become very rough. The sisal pack is now awful, there can be gaps up to 1/8th wide (yes 1/8th inch) wide of missing bristles all along the wire/spider divider segments. The paint job/screen print is hysterically bad now. The paint almost ALWAYS overlaps into the adjacent segments, for nearly every single segment. The gobs of broken white paint and/or glue on the spider have mostly disappeared but they still happen sometimes. However, in its place, sawdust is often found glued around the outer wire circumference of the board, right on to the face of the board. They still use the stupid old boxes that never hold up to shipping. Since my last review, they started wrapping them in a plastic bag, as they must have gotten enough complaints about the hardware falling out/missing through the giant hole in the front leaving the face vulnerable during shipping and handling. They had a chance to correct this when they reproduced the boxes, but they chose to keep it. How do I know this? When they changed from New Zealand to China manufacturing, they re-printed the boxes. That being said, you can SOMETIMES still get a nice looking board, but to do so you literally need to order 3-4 of them at a time and just return the 2-3 defective ones. I don't understand why this is possible when they can all have the same manufacture date stamp on the back. The inconsistencies look like a different individual worker makes each board by hand, there is no systematic repetition of errors in the exact same places, yet the same errors occur. I can no longer support these boards or this business that has completely ruined what was literally the best board on the market to that of a cheap low quality Chinese crap novelty. See my initial review below. PRIOR REVIEW This board could (read should) be the best board available. However quality control issues and poor packaging prevents this designation in my opinion. I have purchased over 100 of these through Amazon, so this is worth both Amazon and the manufacturer reading these comments. If you happen to receive a safely delivered board with no quality control issues, this is the best looking, and best performing durable board on the market. HOWEVER, very often these arrive with issues. 1) The white paint on the spider is almost always chipped, globby, or completely missing on multiple areas of the board. For the globs, It is almost like when it is wet something gets stacked on top of it before it dries, causing crushed red pepper flake-sized paint pieces sticking to the top or side of the spider. The gobs of paint can sometimes be flicked off with the tip of a dart without damage, but it shouldn't have to be an issue. The chips of missing paint could be damage from shipping, but I will touch on this later. 2) Glue often seeps out around the bulls-eye area, sometimes in huge amounts leaving big discolored gobs. Most of the time this can be "picked off" with a dart tip, but it shouldn't ever leave the warehouse like this. 3) Sometimes there are very big gaps where the bristles are missing where sisal groups didn't form-fit together, where a whole dart tip can be placed inside and rest on it perpendicular. It can be fixed by the purchaser by taking a dart tip and pushing nearby bristles around to work it closed, but this again is work that the buyer shouldn't have to be doing. 4) The factory box/packaging design on paper seems unique and flattering to the product beauty however is flawed. It has a huge window (read open to surroundings and exposed) front where it shows off how beautiful the board (could) be. However this enormous missing section of cardboard lets the mounting brackets fall out all the time and used to show up missing often. Lately, these ship within a sealed plastic bag around it to catch what falls out, so they must have been alerted of the problem. But that is not a solution. The open window is fine for a retail shelf, but not suitable for shipping. 5) The hexagonal box doesn't have enough room for the huge erroneous 2nd mounting bracket (plastic "alien" style bracket) so it bounces off the front of the beautiful dart board the entire truck ride, causing more damage. Sometimes a mounting screw is completely embedded into the playing field. Seriously, nobody expects to receive this plastic mount, and wouldn't be missed it if it is gone. I doubt many people even use it. Please stick to the conventional metal bracket and single screw, and tape the little bag that holds them to the inside of one of the cavities in the box so it doesn't come loose and damage the board or get lost. Again, if these items get corrected, this is the best board on the market. However, I have lost my patience and have lately begun buying the Winmau Blade 4 through Amazon, and the issues above do not exist like this. So the Winmau may become my next 100+ board purchases. Now, you may ask, with all these gripes, why did you keep buying these? For me, the best selling point of the board is that the face is nearly completely smooth looking, where you don't immediately see all the lines/seams where the groups of sisal bristles are packed in together. All competitor brands have very distinct "fault lines" between the bristly packs, in which they look almost like the board shattered. I personally can't stand that look or design to no end, I despise it. The way this board is assembled is simply beautiful... when not damaged. Also, I have never in 8 years of throwing at one of these, had a bounce out. The last gripe is with Amazon and its shipping packaging. If you purchase just one board, it comes in a box sized and shaped to the equivalent of almost a 40" flat screen TV box. It has more than double the product size vacant space to bounce around all over the place during shipment, which it does. If you purchase two at a time, often they are both shipped in this same size and shape "tv box." However, it is rarely shipped or dropped off width-wise, with the two boards resting side-by side. Rather it is shipped and it is dropped of height-wise, as if hoping the two boards will stack on end and balance on top of eachother in the oversize box. Well it doesn't, so the 2nd board slides down in front of the other board, and then they both bang around together. Sometimes two boards will arrive together shipped in a giant suitcase sized box, with 3 feet of craft paper, almost mocking the packing process. I am sure if there was a better option for a box today it would arrive in it, but I imagine enough dart boards and other similar size items sell across all sellers/products of amazon that a more closely resembling size/shape box can be implemented? PLEASE?!
