Oh yeah, I actually just got those thumb screws a couple weeks ago, I meant to post about it here and then forgot. I didn’t see the funnel when I picked up the screws, but that’s tempting too.
I’m sorry you suck at remembering things. Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Overwatch themed Rivals blasters - 2019
I wonder if they’ll be regular Rivals designs just painted up in Overwatch themes (like the Boba Fett and Deadpool sets) or completely new designs for Overwatch.
I mean, in either case it’s 2019 so I expect the guns might be different compared to what we have today, but are these actually going to look like the guns from the game, or just painted up with the colors of the characters?
With a window of 2019 anything is possible, there are custom Star Wars molded nerf blasters so Overwatch isn’t out of the question. If it was 2018 I’d say color schemes only, ala Deadpool rival and Mandalorian (boba fett) rival releases posted up-topic.
Well, fingers crossed for a fully operational, fully autonomous, Tjorbörn turret.
aww yiss
Expensive at $200 but unlike the nemesis, includes rechargeable battery, and of course 200 rounds. Per a different review, it’ll actually hold around 220 rounds.
First up for Overwatch: Reaper
Glad I found this topic! I’ve gone down the foam blaster rabbit hole.
A little background: Every year, I buy my (now) adult kids Nerf guns for Christmas. Nothing big. Nothing specific. Usually a handgun. The cheaper the better, but sometimes I splurge and get something in the $30-$40 range because some goofy feature tickles me. We just all get foam blaster guns of some kind and after dinner, we’ll have a dart war out in the yard. It’s a lark.
This year, sometime in early December, I picked up a couple of dorky orange SMG looking things from Walmart on sale for around $20 each. Adventure Force brand, which I guess used to be (more on that later) the infamous second fiddle faux-Nerf toys made for Walmart by Dart Zone. At that price, they were cheaper than most of the Roblox/Minecraft branded stuff I saw Nerf had on the shelves.
We broke them out after a good Christmas dinner and started running around and shooting at each other, and these suckers were like getting hit with goddamn BBs. Laser straight shots. Loud pops. Uncomfortably powerful hits. It really kinda stung to get smacked by the little half-size darts. Like, WTF, right?
I did some digging and it turns out these are Aeon Pro blasters, which shoot at around 140-160fps out of the box, meant as a cheap entry point for the competitive Nerfing community.
(Not my image, by the way.)
See, while I’ve been goofing around with dinosaur shaped Nerf guns that shoot at around 70fps, there’s been a tidal wave in the semi-serious foam blaster community that I’m only now learning exists.
Nerf basically stuck their flag in the kiddie side and decided they were going to leave the adult hobby crowd to do their thing on their own. Licensed Fortnite blasters and super-cheap components like plastic springs and glued parts was their path. They’re the brand name to beat, so they’re comfortable leaving that adult whale money on the table.
Meanwhile, a slew of folks started 3D printing guns, improving designs, and moving the hobby into something that’s replacing paintball in a lot of areas. Seriously. $200-$300 rifles that shoot half-size darts at 150-200fps is the norm for these guys.
Prime Time Toys, with their Dart Zone and Walmart-exclusive Adventure Force brands, decided to sandwich themselves between the two. They sell ultra-cheap stuff like the $6 pump guns aimed at kids, but they also have a “pro” line (literally the “Pro” series in Walmarts and the “Max” series everywhere else) that appeals to the hobbyists. They’re inexpensive guns that have become very popular in the competitive foam-blasting community for offering 150fps unmodded. The Nexus Pro/Max Stryker rifles in particular have become the defacto answers for most groups when they get someone asking how to start in the hobby because for around $60 a player can have a solid gun that offers plenty of moddability if they want to continue.
Nexus Pro - Exclusive to Walmart
Max Stryker - Exclusive to Target
These have picatinny rails and stock mounts that can actually take accessories meant for real guns. They’re both set at $60 MSRP.
I have no interest in joining one of these groups. I don’t want to Nerf competitively.
Why do I want one of these so badly?
Yeah, it’s nuts. The shelves at my Walmart were overflowing with these. $27 normal price now.
Oh, did mention that all three of these guns can take full-size and half-size darts, thanks to the adapter magazine? They’re also compatible with most Nerf magazines, as well as the hardcore “pro” magazines from third-parties like these:
Welcome to my life in 2019-2020!
I bought the first Dart Zone Pro, back when it was more than $100 ($120? $160? Honestly don’t remember, I think technically it was the Mk. 2 because the first one was a numbered limited edition), just before there were dart zone options on retail shelves around the $50 price point, and man that thing was awesome, but I also had no real use for it. I wasn’t going to go looking for a club, it was just cool to have. And that was the last fancy dart blaster I bought thanks to getting married in 2020.
Holy crap! I just picked up the orange Nexus Pro at Walmart on clearance for $19. The retail web price is $39.
Apparently, the replacement is the Nexus Pro with the purple camo which is $60.
Here we go, I had the Dart Zone Pro Mk 1.1
It was $149, and sold through Target but online only. It was the follow up to the MK 1 with some minor tweaks, and as I said I think the MK 1 was a very limited release directly through Dart Zone.
As you mentioned, Dart Zone stepped in to provide a retail presence for high power blasters between the kid-friendly Nerf 70 FPS and the custom modded world of crazy 150 FPS and up, but they also provided a lot of really solid alternatives right in the Nerf range too. Specifically with their Adventure Force Walmart brand. Nerf’s Stryfe was the standard for battery powered flywheel clip-bed blasters and then the AF Spectrum did everything the Stryfe did but better.
I was really into that stuff in 2020!
Damn! We just got done messing around with the new blaster. It’s amazing! This may be one the best $20 I’ve spent in a long time. Definitely not for young kids though.
Dart Zone announced the end-of-life on the orange Nexus Pro back in May, replacing it with that purple/pink/blue/orange/black model. I see on Reddit that word got out and the foam blaster enthusiasts were going nuts seeking them out in the clearance racks with some folks buying up carts of them to resell.
Makes me wonder how my local store still had this one. Oh well! My lucky day, I guess.
Now I’m looking at the aftermarket mods available for this thing, and oh Lord! I may be in trouble.
Dang! Quite nice, but at over $100 too rich for my blood. I was honestly not going to buy the purple camo Nexus Pro at $60 on the shelf, as tempted as I was, but I saw the orange one next to it and it had a clearance sticker. I thought $19 had to be a mistake, but I was pleasantly surprised when it rang up as marked.
Oh yeah, it was ridiculous that I bought it. I think it still has some features that set it apart from the ~$50 offerings on the shelves at Walmart and Target for people that really care—they still updated the Dart Zone Pro with the MK 1.2 this year at $120 so there’s still some market for a blaster like that.
But in 2020 when you could first buy a blaster through Target that out of the box was shooting around 150 FPS, that was insane at the time, and I was just caught up in the excitement about this thing I would never have a real justification for in any situation anyway. 😁
I think the rubberized grips and the disassembly pins are pretty nice. Not $100 nicer for a casual doofus like me, but very cool. From what I’ve seen/read, it seems the big step back on the 1.2 model is the shoulder stock that folds, which apparently is worse than the stock that comes in the $60 model. It’s weak and bends at the fold when you pump the prime, and for some reason it attaches with a Nerf-standard N-Strike post instead of the M4 buffer tube stock attachment. Not a big deal to the hobby crowd since they’re apt to use their own stock that’s M4 buffer tube compatible, but a weird miss.
Either way, it’s pretty crazy that Dart Zone, which I always thought of as the cheap off-brand Nerf competitor, has actually surpassed the leader in the enthusiast space.
Yup. I’ve been sucked in.
22-dart long magazine (shown) or 18-dart half-length dart magazine. Upgraded spring. Replaced and lubed O-ring. Now hits at about 170-175fps average for regular darts and 180-190fps for short darts.
Dart Zone just announced their Pro Series Mk4, their competitor to some of the blasters coming out of GameFace and Worker.
It looks great, but I think they may have repeated their mistake from the Mk1.2, which is another odd stock setup.
This looks like another wacky Nerf-compatible square attachment point but with a clear buffer/spring tube that extends into the stock. That seems to rule out it being a standard M4-compatible tube. If true, I’m not sure why they keep doing doing this. I know they want cross-compatibility with the ecosystem of Nerf stock attachment stuff, but at this level of foam-blasting, the community wants wider compatibility with existing airsoft stuff.
As for me, yes, I’m still in:
My $20 dollar Nexus Pro with an airsoft stock, iron sights, sling, upgraded spring, and 18-dart Worker magazine.
Xuru, long-considered the third-place retail competitor to Nerf and Dart Zone, announced their entry into the hobbyist space. The X-Shot Skins Pro Series Longshot:
At around $40 USD, this may turn out to be a real killer. They’re doing the Nexus/Aeon Pro thing by including the ability to shoot regular and half-length darts via an included magazine well adapter. Of great interest to the community is the fact this is a bullpup design.
Everyone is waiting to see if this takes proprietary magazines or if it’s compatible with the community-favorite Talon magazine.