Why should I keep punching the bombs?

Question

In the new Target Blast minigame, I'm on a platform with a bomb. After the first hit, it begins counting down from 10, which it explodes after. 10 seconds is a very long time, so I tend to hit the bomb until it gets to 3 and then smash it out towards the targets.

What does having high damage on the bomb accomplish? Does it make bigger explosions? Is there a time that I would want to send the bomb with a lower damage?

The "How to Play Target Blast" does not mention this. The following 4 pages are all I see in the Target Blast tutorial:

1. Touch the bomb to start a countdown! Deal damage to it and then launch it before the explosion!
2. When the countdown reaches zero...BOOM! It'll destroy everything around it.
3. You get two tries to bump up your score. Reach for the top!
4. Touch Zoom In/Out on the lower screen to see a display of the whole area.

Answer 1

The point of hitting the bomb is so the bomb move faster and it does more damage to the structures before exploding. If you just hit the bomb of at about *25% it will only be able to damage the the two types of wood blocks. At around *30% percent you can start to damage the light grey stone blocks and *40% you can damage the dark grey stone blocks.

The higher the percent the better because the bomb will lose speed with every hit to the structural objects. It does not affect the bomb's explosion, just how the bomb moves.

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*Rough estimates based on game play over the last few days.

Answer 2

The higher the damage on the bomb, the farther and faster the bomb will fly. After some testing, I determined that damage does not affect the size of the explosion.

This means that damaging the bomb is designed to simply be a trajectory modifier, so higher damage isn't always better.