Nerf Tips iPhone Scope, Rebelle Line For Girls, Lots More Guns

Hasbro held its Nerf Mega Summer Bash press event last night, where it showed off the future of foam warfare. The company focused mainly on its blasters, including the Nerf Rebelle line for girls, but an optional iPhone mount adds a high-tech aspect to its products.

First, and most directly tech-focused, Hasbro will be releasing a Mission Kit accessory for its blasters that can turn your iPhone or iPod touch(179.00 Apple iPod Touch: 4th Generation - 32GB; Black at Groupon) into a scope. It features an enclosure for the phone that can be attached to any Nerd N-Strike accessory rail (found on nearly all Nerf blasters), and with an app it can function as a scope and battle camera. It goes on sale this fall for $24.99. It seems similar in functionality to Hasbro's Lazer Tag guns, but with foam instead of photons.

You don't need to wait two months for a Nerf battle camera, though you'll have to spend more than $25 if you don't already have an action cam. I devised an N-Strike accessory rail camera and, if you have a sports camera with a stick-on mount for a helmet or bike, you can too. Find a Nerf N-Strike accessory device like a set of sights that has a large, flat surface (I used the iron sights that came with the Nerf Longstrike, which is unfortunately out of production), and stick the helmet mount straight onto the accessory. Place the camera on the mount like normal and put the entire assembly on any Nerf blaster with an N-Strike accessory rail. Look at how it works in the video below, shot on the Looxcie HD( at Amazon) mounted on various upcoming Nerf blasters. Sports cameras tend to not have very good low-light performance, and the event was dark, hence the grain on the video. Nerf wars outside or in a brightly lit office should look much better on any camera.

Nerf has three new blasters coming for the summer, and they're all pretty impressive. The Nerf Centurion is the first Nerf blaster to use the new Mega dart, a much larger dart than the Nerf Elite darts all other dart blasters use. Hasbro says it has a range of up to 100 feet (but my tests put its range at a more reliable 55-75 feet), and its massive size makes it the M1 Garand of Nerf wars. The Nerf Rapidstrike is a motorized assault rifle and the successor to the Nerf Stampede. According to Hasbro, it can fire 3.2 darts per second, which matches what I saw at the Nerf event. Finally, the Nerf Revonix 360 is Hasbro's newest Nerf Vortex blaster, which uses a rotating drum barrel to hold and rapidly fire 30 discs. The Centurion and Revonix 360 are spring-powered, and the Rapidstrike requires four C batteries to run. The Centurion will retail for $49.99 and the Rapidstrike and Revonix 360 will retail for $39.99 when they hit stores later this summer.

Hasbro is getting ready to launch its Nerf Rebelle line of blasters for girls this summer and fall, and it's not quite as bad as you might think. Yes, they're Nerf blasters with pastel colors to appeal to girls, but in all fairness their palettes are equal parts pink, purple, turquoise, white, and black, so they don't look like Barbie's first Nerf gun. They are primarily archery-focused, with the Heartbreaker Bow, Guardian Crossbow (above), and Pink Crush crossbow all sporting bow or crossbow design aspects. The Wildshot, packaged with the Sweet Revenge Kit, stands out more than the bows. It's a six-shot revolver with a thumb lever to cock the blaster for each shot. To Hasbro's credit, these are all completely new Nerf designs, and not simply pastel versions of current Nerf blasters, and they all look interesting. I'm already making plans to repaint two Wildshots in gunmetal or a wood-like finish to have twin revolvers in my personal arsenal.

Accounts from Nerf fan sites like Urban Taggers have hinted at the Wildshot getting a redesign as part of an upcoming Zombiestrike line, but Hasbro has not confirmed any new line yet. If Hasbro does release a zombie-themed line of blasters, the currently available Roughcut double-barreled shotgun is begging for a classic Evil Dead paintjob. All the Nerf products on display at the event will hit the market this summer and fall.