Most mini sticks on the market are cheap, smaller version of other heads that manufacturers make. These heads are usually made with cheaper materials, aren’t that great and break easily. The guys at Nature Boy Lacrosse set out on a mission to make the best mini stick on the market and I think they were very successful in doing so with the new Kraken mini stick. We got our hands on a few of these to test out and we were very impressed.
I actually strung up three Kraken’s (one for myself with Powell Frontier mesh and HP Powerlace and two for our editor with Wolf Athletics Aura Mesh), and was very pleased with the ease of stringing these up using real mesh. There’s tons of sidewall holes and for a mini stick head, the top string holes were surprisingly spaced out nicely. I was able to string up a pretty nice pocket with ease.
The face shape of the head is nice, reminiscent of an X-spec head turned mini, and it is wide enough to be able to use a real lacrosse ball without it getting stuck, which is rare in mini sticks. They also are able to be dyed, unlike many other mini sticks. We dyed two of these with LaxDip and they took the dye nicely. The material on the inside is all smooth which makes a great canvas for some amazing dyes, which is evident in the amazing work the contestants did in the first round of the LaxDip Dyer’s Cup using these heads (check it out on Instagram).
Getting into the aesthetic looks of the head, for a mini stick that isn’t based on a full sized head, this thing looks awesome. The sidewall pattern with lots of aggressive struts looks cool and keeps the sidewall rails very stiff. The rest of the head is pretty flexible and can probably even be used for facing off without issue in basement 1 on 1 battles. The scoop is nicely rounded making group balls pretty simple.
The Kraken comes with a mini ash wood shaft which feels solid in your hand, just like a full sized wood shaft. These will last forever, especially compared to the cheap aluminum shafts that usually come with mini sticks.
The Nature Boy Kraken really is the best mini stick I’ve ever been able to play with and we’re having a lot of fun messing around with these. I’d recommend one of these to anyone looking to pick up a mini stick for playing around with in the house and could even recommend this to parent’s looking to buy a usable stick for a toddler to start playing with. Overall, I really like these and thing Nature Boy Lacrosse did a great job with them.
