When I was a kid, “It’s Nerf or nothing” meant you couldn’t find a better dart blaster. From today, this means that if you buy Hasbro blasters for your kids, you will have to buy your own expensive Hasbro darts.
The company today reveals a new Nerf N-Series line and a new “N1” dart, which it calls the “future” of the Nerf brand — a future in which Hasbro blasters for ages 8 to 14 fire only Hasbro darts that cost three to five times the cost more than the competition. Lost your arrow? That will be 25 cents because only official darts have the patented tab that pushes out the safety mechanism.
The company says these new darts should completely replace existing Elite darts within the next 12-18 months.
Nerf claims to have literally built 1,000 different darts to achieve the desired range, accuracy and safety.
Integral piping at the back. If you press it, air will come out of the hole.
The blasters themselves are cool, but is this the much-derided Ultra Nerf again? Not really, for three important reasons.
First, while today’s new kids’ blasters don’t support any existing dart or magazine, the company says the Nerf Pro brand – which does – will continue to exist. “We are developing on [age] We launched the 14+ blaster line with Stryfe X,” Nerf product design manager John Falkowski confirms when I ask. “I think you will be pleasantly surprised by what you see when these items are announced.”
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The $40 N-Series Infinite is a flagship blaster with a detachable 40-dart strap that can be charged on the fly, an inflatable function, and storage for 16 additional darts.
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The $40 N-Series Infinite is a flagship blaster with a detachable 40-dart strap that can be charged on the fly, an inflatable function, and storage for 16 additional darts.
Secondly – see the gallery above – the new N-Series blasters are big, bold and mostly satisfying designs that shoot darts much further than Hasbro’s previous kid-friendly options! Thanks to the new N1 dart being shorter, wider and softer, Nerf can now shoot it at 90 feet per second compared to 70 fps for the Elite darts it replaces, without increasing the dart’s weight (still 1 gram) nor its force of impact on the kid.
I timed four of the new blasters using the chronograph, and they all average 90fps – except for the secondary barrel of the Ward two-shot pistol, which averages 83-84fps. My immediate observation is that the arrows still fly off target with the slightest crosswind, but many of them fly quite straight without it.
The Nerf N1 dart (orange) compared to the Elite (deep blue), Ultra (black), Mega and Mega XL (red, light blue) and the short Worker dart (purple) favored by the Nerf community.
Safety is the reason Nerf is discontinuing compatibility with Elite darts, which have been around for more than a decade, Falkowski explains. The new dart is wider and shorter so it can be softer and safer, and the patented stud is designed to “maintain the integrity of the Nerf brand,” ensuring a degree of safety at this speed. As a result, Hasbro will not provide safety glasses with these blasters.
“There are always pros and cons to a closed system,” Nerf global marketing director Patrick Schneider admits, hinting that I should be on the lookout for new blasters this fall that appeal to an older age group.
The third reason this isn’t an Ultra repeat is the prices – they’re not outrageous for these new blasters. While shipping a two-shot blaster with just two darts seems a little ridiculous (you’ll have to buy more if you lose even one!), $40 for the flagship Infinite, which comes with 80 darts, is more firepower for kids than Nerf has offered at this price since longer time. The much-derided Ultra line came with a much less interesting $50 blaster.
Me, holding Pinpoint. They are all large enough for adults and have comfortable handles.
None of this means that Hasbro will be ahead of the curve: competing companies have proven that you don’t need to break compatibility with Elite darts for over a decade to increase range and accuracy while meeting safety requirements. While Hasbro claims these darts are superior to its own Elite darts in every way, that’s an incredibly low bar, and the team dodged my question about how they stack up against competing darts that cost much less.
But I can’t deny that these blasters look and work quite well – apart from the occasional jam on my Infinite test unit, I’m not sure what’s going on there – and that I would have enjoyed them when I was a kid.
A photo of the Sprinter has been leaked.
In the U.S., Target will also receive two exclusive blasters: the $25 Strikeback pump-action shotgun, with an internal magazine for six darts and side panels that slide forward to provide a sense of recoil after the shot; and the $30 Shadow Storm, a top-primed pistol with an eight-dart internal magazine that comes with an attached barrel, stock and sight.
Walmart will get the Sprinter for $30, the only motorized blaster in the line, which is powered by six AA batteries, has a detachable 16-dart magazine and fires semi-automatically.
The first N-series blasters will arrive in June and July.
Photography: Sean Hollister / The Verge
Credit : www.theverge.com
