Featherweight or Tumble Recovery?

There are a few small "Featherweight" / Tumble" models out there.
Above is the Quark and Mini Mosquito from Estes.
An early featherweight rocket kit was the Estes Streak introduced in the early 1960s.
The 13mm Mini Brute Mosquito was introduced in 1972 and had featherweight recovery.
The Estes Quark was introduced in 1997.

The 1971 Estes catalog yellow pages describes Featherweight Recovery as:
"The model is designed for extra light weight (under 1/4 oz.) and has a blunt nose. When the engine is ejected from the rocket, the model is so light compared to it's size that it lands safely.
The lightweight, aerodynamically unstable spent engine casing tumbles back separately."

What used to be described as "Featherweight Recovery" is now "Tumble Recovery".
Problem is, they don't really tumble.

Here's some of my favorite review quotes about the "featherweight" recovery of the Quark from RocketReviews.com:

"I heard it stab into the ground right next to second base."
"Dangerous rocket, flew 100+ altitude and nosed into ground twice."
"Became a 5" long lawn dart and buried itself in the soft dirt and suffered no damage."
"It doesn't tumble and will bury itself in soft ground. If it weren't for the white fins we may not have found it in the short grass." 
"The Quark had lawn darted under power into the soft turf. We laughed and decided it was a better rocket to display than fly."
"Considering the lawn dart like recovery I would guess that getting hit in the head with the pointy end off the Quark would feel like getting whacked with a golf ball. It's quite a thrill to hear the stereo "THUNK THUNK" of the Quark and it's engine landing on either side of you. Wear a hat!"
"And like others say it does not tumble, it embeds. I saw it lift off....silent..then THUNK and it landed next to me. Wear a helmet when launching :-)"
"It even LOOKS like a lawn dart. Form follows function, I guess."

The Quark doesn't have a blunt nose cone. Not a good design feature for a feather weight lawn dart!

My Estes Mini Mosquito doesn't tumble down. It also noses in after the ejection charge goes off.
Reviews of the Estes 220 Swift  - CLICK HERE - say it also nose dives in.

One of the few featherweight kits that didn't nose in was the Centuri Lil' Herc. It ejected it's engine and actually tumbled down!

You can't see it in the catalog picture but there were small washers glued onto the ends of the trailing fins. Sort of like the Estes Scout, it was stable going up and unstable coming down.