Tie Your Finger Ribbon

A great deal is going to be said about the sudden and saddening departure of Urban Taggers and its proprietor, Pocket, from the community.  I may well end up saying a lot about it, but for now I'd just like to implore foamheads of all stripes to simply remember UT.  Remember the depth, the civility, the level of engagement, the modesty.  Pocket set the benchmarks for community authorship that all bloggers should aspire to reach, and that is something none should be inclined to forget.

One Step Closer to Robocop in a Box

Okay, I haven't been the most studious of community members in recent months, so this may be old news, but my buddy Chronos caught something in the Rebelle promo video released recently that I'm quite pleased to see.

 

 A freakin' holster.  How 'bout that.

 This is great news (provided is actually something new).  It appears to be made of some pretty sturdy plastic, there's some nice integrated dart storage, and best of all, it seems certain that it locks into place along a tactical rail.  The image below gives a clearer picture of this than the one above.

She's wearing a pink shirt, and she's confident.  How 'bout that.

Notice also how the shell of the holster progresses up the thigh some distance from the blaster's anchor point, which suggests that it will be quite stable on the hip.

Now, I'm not particularly excited for the Rebelle line.  I'm pleased to see Nerf trying to approach a broader set of demographics, but from a competitive, collector's perspective it doesn't have much to offer except a redeco of the Hammershot.  The video, available through the link at the close of the post, is also quite ham-fisted , an advertizing piledriver.  I am, of course, quite a ways off from the target demographic, so I supposse it's all copacetic.

This holster, though, will either make me buy Rebelle's Hammershot or wait to see an N-Strike (or Zombiestrike) iteration.  I'd be interested to see if left-sided versions will be available, and to get a look at exactly how it attaches to the hip.  Separately, this holster's appearance bodes well for the theoretical quality of the holster slated to be released with the Zombiestrike Sidestrike, and for the future of branded Nerf accessories on the whole.  Barrels, lights, scopes and sights are great and I'm glad they're around, but non-stock weapon accessories geared towards genuine function and utility are few and far between.  I like making my own stuff, sure, but in this case more is merrier.  Seriously.

Credit to Nerf Canterbury for the video.  Images captured from the video itself.

Official Nerf Rebelle Homepage

Zombiestrike: Controvisual

One day without internet service and I miss all the hubbub.  The community is all a'twitter over the broader Zombiestrike reveal, and while it is certainly has presented us with a great deal to talk about, the sentiment of mild upset and aesthetic criticism isn't something I can really get behind.  I have no desire to start a fight on the matter, which is perhaps the closest thing I have to a point: I don't find the design origin of these new blasters of any amount of concern worth bickering about.

Sweet Jiminy Biscuits, Damnit, Etc.

Wow, okay.  So some while after taking a look at Animal's writeup on the Auxiliary Classes over at Coastal Bend, I realized something was missing.  I couldn't put my finger on it immediately, just had a nagging itch of some sort.  Then it jumped out and hit me like a magnificent Stupid Hammer from the Dumbass Dimension: I left out a whole damn class!  I did all the work refining the images and editing the text for their rules but entirely failed to compile it into the PDF.  At any rate, that missing class, the Hunter, has now been added as originally intended.  Enjoy the revised class list through the link below.

Player Classes and Weaponry

521,600 Minutes, Motherf***er

Around the time that I slacked off and stopped posting, things in the Nerf world were entering their yearly slowdown following the roll-out of the Elite line.  Maybe my temporary disinterest in the hobby was coloring things inappropriately, but the dead zone in last year's product cycle seemed particularly vacuous and boring, particularly after the underwhelming arrival of the "flagship" Hail-Fire.

In this context, the timing of my return to the community seems rather serendipitous, at least as far as my individual interests are concerned.  While not universally exciting, a tidal wave of new foam goodness is on the way.  If I had been paying more attention in the last year all these developments might seem a little less momentous, but now that we are on the cusp of release I'm getting all tingly.  This is particularly true regarding the Sledgefire, the pics and info for which I managed to miss until today.

A cartridge-based firing system might set off some alarms, but when I look at this blaster I see a furthering of the pleasing signs evident in the rest of the fall's offerings.   Promising new individual blasters, multiple new product lines, new priming and firing systems, a new ammo type.  Efforts are being made to cater to the hardcore and explore new demographics.  Forward, forward, forward.

While, in aggregate, this may fall short of perfect nobility (we are talking about a corporation here, after all), Hasbro is driving the Nerf brand out of the corner swinging with both hands, from all angles, with the gloves off, wearing a minimum- minimum - of five rings with pointy bits.  It's going to be a hell of a year.