[L473ncy]

IMO they're average.

I personally wouldn't get one unless it was from their Top Tech line (even then I'd probably stray towards G&P or VFC at that kind of price). Also their "Combat Machine" line is a joke IMO, I'm not sure how true this is but I heard (don't remember where and it's probably an unreliable source) the CM gearboxes use "lower tier"/binned parts compared to their "regular" line which use parts from batches that have better tolerances. Again, not sure if it's true or not but it kind of makes sense, not to have 2 production lines for different parts but to put parts that don't meet the higher QC standards into lower bins (eg. Phenom 955 vs Phenom 555 CPU chips).

Reason why they're prevalent is because they were one of the first to establish a strong foothold in Canada/US with average guns at reasonable-ish prices. I don't know how their story is for the US but in Canada around 08-ish they were being imported in decently high volume for Canada and could undercut everyone else like Classic Army, G&P, TM, etc. who usually had higher prices that were only slowly falling down.

Then you have concepts like product inertia and first to market where competitors need to try and catch up but can't because of the prevalence of another product (eg. Dvorak vs qwerty keyboard).

tl;dr Billy 12 year old gets a G&G (an average gun for an average price) because it's awesome and better than the CT/Wally world specials and all his friends want one now disregarding other brands like G&P, VFC, TM, CA, KA, JG etc. Momentum keeps G&G "winning" compared to other brands that might have the same or slightly better products.

Personally I don't own any G&G but I've kind of curbed my airsoft purchases for now trying to save up for other stuff (a KTM Duke and Carbon 29er MTB).