>>11361253>>11361687Between the entire Nerf brand just up and dying and most of the conversation turning to 3d print wank, the community as a whole just seemed to give up. The sad part is we were seeing some really nice non-nerf product coming out, but with the biggest dog in the room lying dead in the corner, no one really cared anymore. Hasbro's decisions of using new proprietary ammo types, moving away from silly gimmicks and blaster modularity made blasters dull for kids to use and the cheapening of material combined with directly anti-modder practices sent clear a message that older fans were not wanted in the fandom.
Then there was a big push from other companies to make more "competitive" performance blasters, which while great idea on paper, seemed to do more harm than good. Blasters started getting too expensive to buy on a whim and too powerful to have harmless in-home/office wars. You couldn't just grab a bunch of silly looking revolvers for cheap and have quick shoot outs in your house. Blasters had to have realistic ergonomics and hit triple digit FPS numbers (as well as price tags), so if you weren't at least wearing goggles you were gonna have a bad time.
I work a job where I would literally find tons of old discarded Nerf guns and I would just take them home. I built up a huge stockpile of blasters in various states of functionality to the point where I lost count of the actual total number I own. But the past few years, I haven't seen anything. Blasters are either too expensive for kids, so they don't get outgrown, or are specifically designed to be "collectables" more then toys so people hold on to them. But that older collector market was always the minority of dart blaster aficionados as they were most often bought by/for kids. But kids don't play with nerf blasters anymore because nerf don't make blasters kids want to buy.
Pic related was the last time I took a collection shot back in 2017
