Friday, July 19, 2013

NXT Generation: Hunting for wee tackers.

Most toy manufacturers have been very sensitive about the association between their blasters and real life guns.Killing? There's no killing here. And they're NOT guns, they're blasters.... Well not NXT Generation; this American toy company gets straight to the point and suggests:

"the next generation is our future; they will be the ones to protect the environment and the great sport of hunting and shooting."

I've never really heard of them before; I'm not sure how well this sort of marketing would go in Australia, but I was curious and did some research. Findings after the jump:)




Their range attempt to look pretty realistic but their primary blaster is the NXT shotgun, that comes with three velcro darts and three suckers. It's pump action single shot by the looks of it. and no bright colours or weird names here. Nope, it's a shotgun, and it's made to look like one:)


They also do bows, both longbow and cross bow varieties. 
Now the targets. We're talking genuine simulated hunting here- you can get a variety of inflatable targets to shoot at- be it a bear, deer, wild pig or even a turkey:)



And it appears they've been very quick to respond to Nerf's Rebelle line (or perhaps they were even first to the mark for all I know) with the aptly named "NXT Generation Girlz" line, although they're basically the same gear as the regular one, only pink.



This sort of deviates away from the realism of their gear though, and I guess the idea of a single shooter on your hand is kinda novel?

I'm a little unsure how I feel about these. They pretty much pull no punches and come right out and tell us they're about simulated hunting and replicating real life shooting. They're basically about teaching about firearms to an extent. Is this a good thing?

I'm not convinced. Still.. another line of toys to consider?
NXT Generation official site

9 comments:

  1. So wrong. I'm surprised there's no inflatable "terrorist" or something like that available in USA.

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    1. They should do an inflatable zombie! Oh and they forgot the inflatable beaver.....

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  2. The Bows look pretty damn cool...

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  3. My fav is the disclaimer on the compound bow. Nice job with the research mate. Keep up the good work.

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  4. The pink ones have been available at one of my local hunting gear stores for a while, they seem to sell okay. One of my friends got the normal color crossbow when we found it a Toys R Us, it's surprisingly well built and pretty powerful. It'd take a pressure-spring mod to get it to work with regular NERF darts, although it might work with the mega darts whenever they come out.

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  5. I can't find the glove blaster online, or in stores

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  6. sick i can help a little here :)

    im in aus and they at least will get through fine despite the mat black next gen shotty version looking pretty brutal. iv got 2 variants of the crossbow, and a couple of the shotties just to see what you could do with em.

    and i hadnt thought about this till you mentioned it, the pink next gen shotgun has been available since at least january last year.

    shotties get about 10ft max (the mat black one looks niiice tho.) youd need a pretty serious overhaul to get it any better, unless you got a miracle assembly and it pushed 15ft somehow.

    the crossbows hit about 28 flat -40ish feet max angled, are quite a bit quieter than the average nerf blaster, and use bigger darts, that seem to go a little straighter than normal nerf darts. awesome fun for room plinking.

    that pimp hand glove tho, i gotta get me one of those :O

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  7. The shotgun is flimsy crap.

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  8. Protect the enviroment with hunting. The reason hunting is considered to protect the enviroment is so we can control the population of animals that their predators we shoot. Out right saying they're guns shows how desensitized to violence the world has gotten. Kids play with guns and kill people in games (I am a strict believer in Nerf blasters being blasters not Nerf guns). Some of the most popular games in the world are shooters. When the US kills people in wars and wins people cheer, CHEER. This stuff doesn;t help, not to mettion it sucks.

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