Nerf Action Xperience Blaster Review

I don’t normally review blasters I find in liquidation or overstock stores – it’s a blog focused on current products, after all. This is, however, a unique situation. The blaster at hand was only ever seen at Nerf Action Xperience locations (I handled one during a past trip to the United Kingdom). Such locations appear to be retooling or delayed. And the blasters themselves have never been on store shelves. So when boxes of them suddenly show up at Ollie’s Bargain Outlet…it’s worth noting and reviewing!

The Nerf Action Xperience blaster is a well-built revolver, meant not only to hold up to abuse, but also to be a bit of a testing ground. It’s the transition between Elite and N Series, and if anything, it’s a solid performer that’s worth being in the collection as a part of history.

It’s been a busy month between work, Maryland Mayhem, and actually mailing a few of these blasters to people…but I can finally sit down and post something!

Some Context!

Last year, my wife and I took a vacation to the UK. While we were traveling through the country, we made a stop in Manchester. Since we were in the area, we went to see Europe’s first Nerf Action Xperience facility, which had activities ranging from Nerf Sports booths and blaster arcades to arenas where everyone was handed a Gelfire blaster for combat. Since then, the facility has apparently closed – it shut down with little notice in March, and we later learned that the facility is upgrading to a presumably all ages, all things Hasbro experience (or at least Play-Doh).

In any case, one of the most exciting things to see there was an arena-exclusive blaster pistol without a name. It fired Elite darts, held eight in the cylinder, had both a slide and a loop for priming it, and was really robust and built for abuse. Some features were later recognizable as stepping stones in design – the priming loop idea was used here, and then carried over for the N Series Agility, for example. But the blaster itself was arena-exclusive for use…at least until they started appearing on shelves at Ollie’s Bargain Outlet.

Peeking Inside

The Action Xperience blaster is in many ways a stepping stone between designs. It’s still chambered for Elite darts, it still has multiple catches for enabling slamfire, and there’s a nice cage encasing the internals. At the same time, though, it’s clearly shifting toward what we saw in the N Series Agility. The priming handle and loop are the most obvious bits, of course. At the same time, what is the traditional rotation mechanism (a central ratcheting mechanism) is fully encased and ignored, while a large bar up top moves through grooves in the cylinder. Granted, that development has been a long time coming (see the Dinosquad Armorstrike), but here the mechanism is even simpler.

Overall, I’m averaging 73fps with the ones I’ve purchased and tested, and a 3 dart per second rate of fire when using slamfire. As a regular blaster pistol, it’s decent. But it’s comfortable to hold and use, which goes a long way in my book.

Final Thoughts

Regardless of the status of Hasbro’s brand experience and licensing efforts, the fact that these have hit shelves at a liquidation outlet chain would indicate that the previous effort is dead. As such, there’s a pretty limited supply of Action Xperience Blasters out there. I know I’ve helped mail a bunch of these to people already who don’t live anywhere near an Ollie’s store.

It’s definitely not necessary for the collection…but if you have access to one, I’d be certain to buy it. They’ll be gone soon enough, and as far as blasters are concerned, it feels great and performs well enough to have some fun with it.