Emma Nelk

Prof. Newcomb

ENG 170: Writing & Rhetoric

18 Feb. 2022

Nerf Guns

            It all started with a small foam ball for kids to toss around in the house without getting in trouble with their parents. Then a small plastic tube-like gun was created to shoot those foam balls. According to an article titled, “The History of Nerf”, written by Thomas D. on a website called Blaster Central, the original Nerf gun was called the Blast-a-Ball. Toys have developed a lot since the first Nerf gun and gun culture has also changed a lot along the way. Games are no longer as simple as they used to be. It used to be that a group of kids would gather around and arm themselves with the plastic guns and play a war game. Nowadays, kids don’t play much like older generations because of video games or they don’t find it as interesting as their phones and tablets.

The article from Blaster Central talks about the history of Nerf and how it developed into such a hugely popular company admired by many children who enjoy playing with plastic toy guns. The article gives parents and Nerf fans a run-down of how long Nerf has been around and how the company got to where it is now. According to the article, a man named Reyn Guyer is the person who came up with the idea, in 1969, of a small foam indoor ball for kids to play with. Guyer was also known for creating a game called Twister around the same time. It’s the classic and simple games that matched the level of developed technology that was around at that time that makes today’s games feel too complicated. It’s the simple games that are the most fun because there shouldn’t be so many rules and regulations to structure having a good time. This says that childhood has grown more structured and has more rules that need to be followed to be perfect. However, childhood is not something that can be tied down by rules because that’s not how life works for anyone. Childhood is thought of as a carefree and happy time for children, but that’s not the case for all children. Adults can do what they can to give their child a sense of freedom and happiness, but the childhood they give them will still include structure and rules. There has to be time where children can make decisions of their own, like what they want to play with and how they want to play.

Nerf has come a long way and continues to entertain the younger generations. According to the article, the company was handed over to Hasbro, who eventually took over Tonka; a company that took over the parent company of the Nerf owners. In that time, new toys were put out known as the Bow ‘N Arrow and a couple years later the Sharpshooter as the first Nerf blaster to shoot what is now the iconic foam darts. To entertain many young kids, Nerf has had to keep making changes and upgrades to keep the young ones interested to want to get the next model or add on.

In the article, the author uses his research to support his findings of Nerf’s history. Those findings include brief details about how the company paired up with someone who was a US Air Force engineer and a worker at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to create a water gun nostalgically known as the Super Soaker; a water gun that every kid wanted to have in order to win water gun fights with just one spray to the body or the face. These instances bring the readers in just like the introduction paragraph that set up the whole article. The author pulls us in with the feeling of nostalgia of having fun with our friends and family growing up. There are a couple of times that I can remember my cousins coming over to my house and taking my brother’s Nerf guns and having a one-for-all in the house. We would move furniture around to be used as cover and obstacles. Afterward there would be Nerf darts all around the house and you would still be finding them around the house the following couple of months. Near the end of the article, there is mention of a couple of popular brands that most kids today can understand, as well as the older people who have known those brands, and that brings in interest from a large group of people who share a liking to brands including Nerf in their work.

The article is very straightforward in how it presents itself. The title says exactly what will be discussed in the article when mentioning history. The history of Nerf is laid out and easy to follow with the facts and bits of nostalgia sprinkled in. The author even mentions numeric evidence by researching Nerf’s revenue from 2011 to state how powerful the brand has become. A lot more has happened than initially thought with a simple, small brand that transformed into a major brand that many generations from the past, present and future kids will still go crazy about and want a Nerf gun of their own.

 

Work Cited

D, Thomas, “The History of Nerf (From Foam Ball to Billion Dollar Brand).” Blaster Central, 8 Feb 2022, https://www.blastercentral.com/nerf-history/, accessed 10 Feb 2022.