Gel ball, meet Jolt. That’s the basic premise of the Nerf Pro Gelfire Ignitor, which uses a grip plunger to fire balls from an integrated hopper. For $10, it actually meets or exceeds all expectations I had for it. It’s still not a 200 to 250+ fps primary, but it’s a fun little blaster that gets the job done, even with a couple quirks. And with a few mods, foam dart hobbyists might grab some, as well!
Eye on the Ball
The hopper sits at a 60 ball capacity. That’s small, but it’s already a fairly small blaster. However, there’s a secondary reason for a small hopper: dead space. The blaster simply catches the next ball above the plunger tube (no breech to speak of) and holds it there until you fire. Once the ball is moving, some of that air pressure is going to venture up into the hopper. If you had a large hopper, like those in the Mythic or Legion, the air pressure loss would be insane as the hopper emptied. As it stands, though, the Ignitor’s hopper seems well-sized to maintain ball velocity.
Performance
There’s no hop-up here, so expect to arc balls toward your target, rather than hitting with pinpoint accuracy.
The gel ball velocity, meanwhile, averaged 159fps (at first) in the sample I bought. Towards the end of the hopper, with the added dead space being pressurized, I was still averaging ~149fps. It’s nice to see a blaster outperform the numbers on the box art.
Internals and Mods
The blaster uses a leaf spring for the trigger and catch. However, there is a slot in the molding for a small catch spring – it presumably got deleted once the leaf spring proved sufficient, since those cost less.
How long until someone makes a Talon-fed short dart pistol out of this?
Last Thoughts
The Ignitor is better than expected, and would be fun as a sidearm, at the very least. As a hobbyist, I’m more interested in what it will look like after people are done with it!