Peacemaker

OK... just in case this hasn't been posted yet...

We have a confirmed sighting of the Maverick Rev-6 in the East Coast/Greater Atlanta, GA area.

I just picked up a couple of shiney new Mavericks at the North Point Mall Toys-R-Us (located at 7731 Northpoint Parkway in Alpharetta, GA - GA Hwy 400 North just off Exit 8 Mansell Road). They have them on sale for $9.99. I grabbed up 2 for myself, and there were at least 8 or 9 left on the shelf. Get 'em while the gettin's good.

What could be attached on the end of the Scout barrel? Maybe a silencer, maybe a barrel extension, maybe something... completely different (queue up the Python theme).

Here's a silly question... what good would a silencer at the end of the barrel of a Nerf gun be? I can see the use of silencers on real guns. When the bullet is discharged, the explosive force of that discharge has to escape somewhere, and it escapes from the end of the barrel. So a device attached to the end of the barrel that muffles the sound of this small escaping explosion makes sense. However, on a Nerf gun, the mechanics are different. When shooting a spring gun (like a LnL or a NF or a Max Shot... and presumably a Scout), the sound created comes from the spring being sprung and the plunger being thrown forward in its tube, all of which happens in the center of the gun, not the end of the barrel. And given that the casing on Nerf guns is nothing but a thin plastic shell, there's nothing there to muffle or mitigate the sound that this action creates. So I don't see how attaching a silencer on the end of a Nerf gun barrel would serve any real purpose (except to make it look cool). It would seem to me the only way to “silencer” a spring gun would be to wrap some kind of foam or padding around the body of the gun.

Admittedly, I've never tried to silence any of my guns, so I'm speaking purely from the theoretical depths of my own deranged mind. In hindsight, maybe a barrel-mounted silencer would be a workable idea on an air gun (where the pressurized air escapes the barrel much like the explosive discharge of a bullet on a real gun). Is there anybody out there who actually uses/used a Nerf silencer that actually silenced the gun?

OK, I gotta ask this...

In between all the requisite drooling, has anyone looked closely at the barrel tip of the Scout/N-3? And if so, has anyone else been curious about those strange little "T" shaped indentions on the sides of the short little orange barrel? They don't appear to be punched all the way through, so the possibility that they are some sort of air restriction feature seems unlikely. I don't want to stir unfounded rumors, but it almost looks as if they are designed to have something clipped into them...

Any thoughts or theroies, or should we just consider them a purely aesthetic design feature and nothing more?

Me likey. Thanks for sharing, Talio. I love it that Hasbro is designing their new Nerf guns with bigger hands in mind (teen/adult) (i.e. the Nite Finder and the Tech Target), instead of giving their guns teeny-tiny little handles that older players can't grip comfortably.

Too bad they couldn't market these guns separately like 'Voltron' toys, i.e. each robot lion is sold separately, but if you collect all 5, you can then assemble them into one mega-robot. They could sell these 3 guns individually (the Scout for around $5, the Titan and Hornet for around $10-$15 each), and encourage people to buy all 3, because if you collect all 3, you can then "asseble them into one huge mega-gun that will allow you to rule the Nerf battle fields". They'd probably encourage more sales that way, as not everybody will want to drop $30-40 at once for the full set, but most would be more than willing to pay $5-15 for each separate gun. Over time players would eventually buy all 3 for the full set, but they could pace themselves buy only spending $5-10 at a time. Likewise, those that are only interested in one gun (example: just the hornet) would more than likely not spend $30-40 for the whole set just to get the Hornet, but would be more than will to spend $10 for the Hornet alone. Hasbro would thereby increase the number of sales in the long run.

I'll go along with you on that one, texmustache. I gave in to curiosity, broke down and bought the Skeet Shoot yesterday. It just looked so damn cool. I have to admit I liked the heft and feel of it. I liked the textured, rubberized grip and the handle was big enough to feel comfortable in the hands of a teen/adult (unlike some guns that were obviously designed for 9 year olds with handles so small that disappear in your hand), and with its stock and over all size it had a good rifle feel to it. But performance-wise, it blows chunks. Out of the box it got about maybe 10-15 feet in range at a level shot (maybe). I didn't open it up to inspect the guts, but it felt like a very weak spring gun in operation (weaker than the SM350, which is saying alot), and the barrels had some really funky looking air restrictor designs built into them. Upon close inspection of the outer assembly, it appeared that the round pieces on the nose of the gun (encircling the rotating barrels) and the ammo holder on top of the gun were separate from the 2 main halves of the primary shell, and quite possibly glued/bonded to the shell halves (like the nose on the Max Shot), which meant that I couldn't open it up without permenantly damaging the gun, which I didn't want to do. I had so little confidence in this gun's potential that I didn't want to damage it in any way, so that I could rebox it and take it back. Which is exactly what I did this morning. I returned that piece of crap to TRU, got my $43 back, and bought another AT3K for $10 instead.