You want to bring a badass foam blaster to your next Nerf war — or gift one to a very grateful kid or kid-at-heart this holiday. Good news: the Nerf Rival Perses, arguably the best official blaster ever made, is just $50 during Walmart’s Cyber Monday sale.
The best official Nerf blaster ever made is half off for Cyber Monday
Cherry picking deals on actually decent blasters
Cherry picking deals on actually decent blasters
Image: Hasbro
is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
Normally $100, it’s a fully automatic SMG-style blaster that holds 50 far-flying, bouncy foam rounds in its hopper and dishes them out at up to eight shots per second. Plus, you won’t need to buy big bulky dumb alkaline batteries for this one. It comes with its own rechargeable NiMH battery pack and charger, unlike practically every other Hasbro blaster on the market.
Just know it’s a little too big for small kids. At over five pounds and with big beefy grips, it’ll be a late pre-teen, teen, or adult that’ll be willing to heft this around.
While the Perses might be the pinnacle of official Nerf blasters (its successor the Mach-100 isn’t so hot), it’s not the pinnacle of Nerf. You can mod it for even more power, add an aftermarket hopper (example) for even more capacity, or try something from another company or even a homegrown blaster to get the most out of the sport. But if you’re looking to spend around $50, you might also briefly consider the $49 Adventure Force Nexus Pro. While it’s not on sale and doesn’t have the fire rate of a Perses, it’s better for accurate blasting outdoors.
There are a lot of other fairly weaksauce blasters on sale this Cyber Monday, but I did spot a handful of others that might be worth your consideration. Also note that Target’s having a buy-two-get-one sale on all Nerf toys.
- Nerf Infinus for $35 (normally $70) at Walmart. The only blaster with a feeding mechanism to automatically load its magazine with darts, it fires 30 of them from an included drum. Needs a lot of batteries and not particularly competitive, but fun!
- Nerf Rival Takedown for $11.16 at Target (normally $15-ish). Fun shotgun-style blaster that gets better with an extremely easy spring upgrade and some 3D-printed mods.
- Nerf Mega XL Boom Dozer for $30 (normally $40) at Amazon, Walmart, Kohl’s. A six-shot revolving grenade launcher featuring Nerf’s biggest darts ever and what I hear is very satisfying action. Practical? Depends on the rules of your local Nerf war.
- Nerf Mega XL Big Rig Blaster for $11.99 (regularly $16) at Target. Same big darts, but one at a time with a bit less shock and awe than the one above.
- Nerf Hyper Rush-40 for $17.49 at Kroger or $22.25 at Amazon (normally $30). It’s regarded as the most useful blasters in the otherwise somewhat lackluster Hyper lineup, once you add a cheap hop-up barrel tab so it shoots straight.
- Nerf Jolt for $3.69 at Target or Amazon (normally $5-ish). Fires just one dart, takes up the least room possible in your pocket or pouch, why not?
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