Holiday Sales, and Xshot Leaks? Blaster New Before Toy Fair!

I was originally just going to make a small post about the state of the market…but then Zuru had to share a story online that had boxes hidden behind people! Blame their social media.

Let’s cover that, then go back to the bits on market share. Besides, a new mag-in-grip flywheel blaster and an Xshot Longshot upgrade are more exciting!

Don’t Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain!

The big story comes from the Life At Zuru Instagram page, which ran this story earlier today. The page is used for behind-the-scenes peeks at offices, personnel, company activities, and more, as opposed to doing the straight-up advertising of products. Because appearing more human is usually a good business strategy, as it turns out. What a shocker!

Anyway, it’s still a fun page to peek at. And sometimes you end up with gems like this picture, where two clearly new blasters are on the shelves behind the subjects! The top one is mostly obscured, but appears to be some kind of Xshot Longshot update – if you zoom in, it indicates both long and short dart use, as well as 200fps!

Beneath that, however, is a previously unknown flywheel blaster! While context helps with reading some of the box (“Motorized”, 6 darts/sec, full auto, 2x magazines), some parts like the name and FPS are too out of focus and too far away to make out. Thrasher has been suggested online, and that does line up with some of the lettering…but we need more pixels! I’m guessing the battery goes up front, though.

Sadly, Xshot doesn’t appear at Toy Fair. However, based on the new offices they’re opening in different countries…I’d say they’re doing just fine dealing with retailers directly. On that note…

Hasbro Present FY 2025 Data

From their website, you can actually access the basic information on the last part of the year, as it turns out! But I’ll post the relevant two slides here.

Hasbro as a company isn’t doing bad – far from it. But it’s interesting to note their market share in the blaster space. 2024 had already been a down year for toys in general, Nerf included, though that was still the number one brand overall in blasters.

This year, Nerf as a whole lost 4.3% points in market share, bringing that to 38.2%. That’s still enough for the #1 spot overall…but if you look at the final quarter specifically, there’s an interesting finding. Q4 to Q4 saw a 5.7% loss, and they only had the #2 spot in the market.

The likely #1? Xshot, of course. Their Insanity line has been selling lite hotcakes (I believe the statement in the picture is actually based in research, not just bravado), and that’s an addition to both the new Pro line blasters and their regular blasters that are on shelves pretty much everywhere. Between great use of viral marketing and inexpensive price points, Xshot has been rapidly catching up in market share, and it was bound to at least begin overtaking Hasbro in some areas.

I’d really like to get my hands on the study that Hasbro cites at the bottom of the page, if only to better understand the blaster market dynamics, as opposed to just reviews and product hype.