Rant: Light it Up Series debrief

Quick recap- Nerf's 'Light it Up" series of blasters (from here on I'm just going to drop the 'It' because it sounds dorky) are probably one of the more interesting releases that have come out of the stable. In the past, the blasters were essentially just repaints of of 4-5 existing blasters, but this Light Up series was somewhat different, with a repaint of a blaster that had only officially been out for a few months (the Vortex Praxis), and another completely new blaster design in the motorised Rayven CS-18. The blasters have been then accompanied by factory 'modified' ammunition clips fitted with LED lights to charge up specially made glow in the dark ammunition (be it streamline darts for the Rayven and XLR discs for the Vortex). And, there's only two blasters (at least thus far) in the series. 

But you already knew all of this huh? Sooo.. let's get into our thoughts, now that the dust has settled. Because we absolutely love them:D

Nerf Vortex Lumitron: Light THIS up..

Well, they have been saying "N-Strike vs Vortex" for quite some time; to accompany/rival the much anticipated N-Strike Rayven CS-18, Nerf have released the new Vortex "Lumitron" as part of their new "Light It Up" series. Unlike the Rayven which was a completely new blaster design, the Lumitron is essentially a repainted Vortex Praxis, only with an all new "Firefly tech" 10 round clip and sans stock. Given we've already reviewed the Praxis, this review will on the whole be a pic spam bar a few comments, but I've gone nuts with the ol' camera, so enjoy the photos!

Paintball Magnum Blaster: Surprisingly powerful

Neil from the Canberra and Southern NSW dart tag crew happened to be very generous and give me one of these "Paintball Magnum Blasters" to test out. I've never heard of them before, but apparently they get a pretty mad thumbs up on various Nerf forums- as quite the insane performer, not just for a single shot blaster, or one that's not even meant for darts originally, but also from an unknown Chinese manufacturer to boot! So I'm game.. ( yes, this is old news. But we review as we get..and not everything we get has to be cutting edge "stolen from the nerf factory" gear. just no pleasing you haters!:P)

Rant: 'Official' Rayven madness

Rayven assault! Pic courtesy of Canberra and Southern NSW Dart Tag 

The question we at UT get more than anything is "when will *insert blaster here* be available in *insert place here*. We for the life of us can never predict- and a classic example of this is the last 48 hrs, which were pretty crazy for Australian Nerf fans and the much anticipated Rayven CS-18...

X-Shot Dual: Discs and Darts in one

The Dual is one of the blasters in the new X-Shot line pegged for this year. It's a very small and compact blaster with the main selling point being the ability to shoot both darts AND discs, hence the clever play on words giving it its name. On paper it sounds pretty good, and at 9.95 AUS, I thought I'd pick it up to have a lil' play and see whether it could impress. 

Nerf "Light It Up" series officially announced

Well it's now official- Nerf finally announced their "Light it Up" series of blasters for an official 3-3-12 release on their Facebook page: the Rayven CS-18 and the Vortex Lumitron. They both sport the same colour schemes, only as we've discussed earlier- one's an N-Strike blaster and one's a Vortex blaster. Once again there are some odd production decisions here; the Rayven is a completely new design blaster, whereas the Lumitron essentially looks like a Praxis repaint, sans stock.  

Still, the bonus is they'll be coming with the 'firefly tech' clips which have a built in blue LED that charges the new glow in the dark streamlines/xlr discs. They are interchangable so once you pick this blaster up, the clips can be used on all of your other N-Strike or Vortex blasters. Be interesting to see if they'll release the clips separately but I'd suggest no...

Rayven's have already been spotted in various locations around the US, so I'd suggest the Lumitron is going to be available pretty soon. The trend is normally blasters do come out before the official release date.. somewhere:)

Stampede ECS-50- the rumour that just won't go away

I know we've gone on about this previously, and it's even been put to bed a few times by "official sources", but we received these photos from a reader who visited a Target in Virginia and saw these.

While I know some of the earlier Stampedes were branded "ECS-50", it seems odd that Nerf would use pics of them for their point of sale promotions so long after their release (and the name was corrected)

Even more so, why they'd fit it out with a drum (does look more like the Raider drum than the mockups of the 50 round "ballz" drum we featured) rather than the standard 18 round clip.

Just a lil weird eh? Thanks to Tami for the pics!