Hasbro has also produced Nerf blasters based on specific franchises, including Marvel Comics, Star Wars, G.I.
A significant modding community has also formed among enthusiasts, who aim to improve the performance and accuracy of existing blasters through upgraded parts and different dart or ammo types.
Nerf blasters have also gained a significant following in the cosplay community, where fans create intricate costumes and props inspired by their favorite characters.
Many features such as tactical rails, barrel and stock attachment points, and magazines (officially referred to by Hasbro as Clips) first appeared in the N-Strike series and characterized the ability for customization, a common sight among today’s blasters.
This limited edition line featured certain N-Strike blasters painted orange and black instead of their usual yellow (or blue) color.
The limited availability of these blasters (Longshot CS-6, Recon CS-6, and Vulcan EBF-25) has led them to become very rare, expensive, and sought after.
This series featured repainted N-Strike blasters with a white base with orange and grey detailing.
They were a Walmart exclusive in the United States, and some have claimed a performance increase compared to their original counterparts.
The plunger tube in the ICON Series Longshot CS-6 was made significantly smaller, leading to limited modification potential.
The ICON series Element EX-6 was given updated internals to shoot similar to an N-Strike Elite blaster.
Released in 2004, Dart Tag features blasters and accessories that are designed for fast-paced, competitive play.
The Vortex series, launched in 2011, features blasters that use XLR (Xtra Long Range) foam discs as opposed to darts.
[3] These discs are capable of traveling at greater distances than darts fired from original N-Strike blasters (up to 65 feet (20 m)[4]) and can also ricochet off walls.
However, Hasbro later adjusted their marketing campaign for these blasters to no longer claim performance improvements after consumers found them to be negligible.
All Doomlands blasters can be distinguished by their orange color scheme with a clear window on one side that allows the priming mechanism to be seen.
This Doomlands subseries features futuristic blasters in a white color scheme while retaining the clear window that allows the internal mechanisms to be seen.
These blasters are typically white and grey, with additional accent colors such as green, blue, or orange.
Many RIVAL blasters and accessories are colored either blue or red to distinguish teams for competitive play.
All blasters exclusive to this sub-series are colored lime green and black and are modeled after competition weapons.
Each Nitro set includes accessories such as obstacles to hit and ramps to launch the cars in the air.
[10] Introduced in August 2019, the Alpha Strike series features blasters that are priced much lower and built more cheaply compared to other Nerf lines.
Many of these blasters are clipped and solvent welded together instead of being screwed together, which makes access to the internals much more difficult in the event of broken parts or modification.
One of the inaugural Elite 2.0 blasters, the Warden DB-8 (the successor to the Rough Cut 2x4), has become infamous for the fragility of its priming mechanism.
Despite these flaws, newer Elite 2.0 blasters have seen an improvement in build quality and have reverted to using screws instead of clips and solvent welding.
Introduced in 2023, the Elite Jr. series features simple, easy-to-use blasters aimed at a younger demographic.
Launched on October 15, 2023, the Nerf Pro series was designed in response to the growing amount of enthusiast-oriented dart blasters available.
The inaugural product, the Stryfe X, utilizes features that are commonly found on most high-performance battery-powered blasters, such as a lithium polymer battery, 180-sized motors, high-flow microswitches, and exclusively using half-length darts, which are considered aerodynamically superior to a standard-length Micro Dart.