Listen. I understand that companies like to sell things. That they make their things look appealing so people will buy them. It’s no secret that you should at the very least be skeptical of anything that is trying to sell you something.
But Nerf ULTRA is just fucking ridiculous. This is some borderline scam shit.
PART 2: AN INTRODUCTION TO SERIES
That joke will make sense later.
Anyways, to briefly introduce Nerf ULTRA, I’ll start by assuming that you don’t really know how Nerf products are categorized, or what it means for one to be ULTRA or Something Else or whatever. Basically, there are different “series” of Nerf blasters, some of which follow certain themes, others of which have unique ammo types, etc. Nerf’s “main” series, for example, is currently called “Elite 2.0”, the blasters of which use “Elite darts” (so named for the Elite series which they debuted in, and not their quality or performance) and can mostly be identified by their lovely teal color (I think their color scheme is actually pretty much unanimously enjoyed. Good for you, Elite 2.0!).
ULTRA is a series that came out in 2019, and is one of the series like Rival or Vortex that has its own unique ammo type. I’ll talk more about ammo types as a whole when I do a Nerf Hyper rant later, but for now we only need to focus on ULTRA’s specifcally. In fact, let’s do that now!
PART 3: ULTRA DARTS
ULTRA darts have quite a few physical properties that seem a little odd. They’re bigger than an Elite dart, but smaller than a Mega dart. They’re made of a material that’s more like styrofoam than Nerf’s usual squishy foam, and doesn’t bend at all. And they taper into that weird cross shape at their back ends…
I originally had a whole paragraph about how the “farthest flying dart ever” claim is funny for a number of reasons but I think I’ll just cut to the chase instead. These darts suck, a lot. Their entire purpose is to be as proprietary as possible, to seem really fancy and cool, to be something only Nerf can provide you with, and that is it. Every physical property I mentioned earlier exists to put more money in Hasbro’s pockets.
Their size being nonstandard means they won’t work in other blasters, and other darts won’t work in ULTRA blasters. Their material makes them wear down quickly, and they can even break on impact. If you try to bend them they also just snap in half. The cross shape on their back end is designed to fit into special mechanical locks inside the blaster that enable it to fire, so if you use a dart that isn’t shaped quite right, like for example if some other company tried to sell you their own version of ULTRA darts (which they fucking wouldn’t! Because they’re terrible! And regular-ass darts exist!), your blaster will straight up refuse to fire. I’ll come back to that little tidbit later, by the way. It’s not good.
All of these factors create reasons for you to buy more darts, and for those darts to be Nerf-brand ULTRA darts. And the worst part is, they’re expensive as fuck. When they first came out, they cost about 50 cents per dart if you did the math for the price of a pack of them. Why?? For what reason?? What benefit could they possibly…
Basically none! ULTRA darts are slightly more accurate than Nerf Elite darts. Nerf Elite darts are the second-least accurate dart you can buy, though. They are by no means a high bar. ULTRA is expensive for the sake of looking like a premium product.
PART 1: ULTRA BLASTERS
I mean, say what you want about the darts, but at least the blasters themselves look— 
OH GODS DAMMIT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAAAAAAT
That’s right! Even (especially) in ULTRA, they still use the “only paint one side” trick! Hasbro, you motherfuckers! The shit they designed to look like a premium product… it’s not even that! They designed it to look like a premium product in the box! You’ll notice that every image of the blasters on the packaging, every photo of a model holding one of them, they’re all very careful to only show the painted side. Speaking of the packaging, it claims that these blasters at least perform really well. 120ft is a pretty long distance!
Only problem there is that it’s almost a complete lie. Most of the ULTRA blasters barely make half that distance. You’d be hard pressed to get 120ft shooting at an angle, with tailwind! The only reason it isn’t a complete lie is that it only claims the blasters can fire “up to 120ft”. They might as well have said “the range is between one Planck length and one lightyear.” That “up to” lets them put a number on the box that is completely fucking meaningless! The actual performance of the blaster does indeed fall within the vast canyon of possibilities that is “up to 120ft”, so they technically aren’t lying at all, but are very obviously being intentionally misleading!
But whatever. They always fudge the numbers a little(!?!?) higher, right? That’s nothing new. The performance isn’t as important as the blasters themselves being fun. Are they at leaNO OF COURSE NOT LMAO THEY’RE AWKWARD AS FUCK. In addition to truly bizarre ergonomics (in a review of the ULTRA Three, blaster enthusiast LordDraconical managed to pinch each of his index fingers in two different spots, one of which was a direct result of practicing the well-known trigger safety rule of resting your trigger finger outside of the trigger guard), operating the blaster has some issues caused by those mechanical locks I mentioned earlier that are made to prevent firing non-Nerf-brand darts. Basically, if you load an ULTRA dart even slightly incorrectly, without making 100% sure that it’s pushed in exactly where it needs to be all the way, the blaster won’t fire. What’s more, the additional mechanical action of those locks existing makes priming the blaster just a little bit clunkier. It’s hard to explain, but basically there are more “steps” that take place inside the blaster, and it’s mechanically more complicated, so it just feels less smooth. Those locks, which are already a scummy business practice to begin with, actually sacrifice the functionality of the product itself for the sake of that scummy business practice. Genuinely enraging stuff.
PART 4: CONCLUSION
Every aspect of Nerf ULTRA is expertly designed to look as good as possible in the packaging and be purchased by the least-informed consumers possible. As soon as you open the box, they no longer give a shit about what happens next. Nerf is cashing in on having built itself up as a premium brand name over the years by pretending to be a premium brand name. Anyone looking into it for more than a few minutes will see that these blasters fucking suck, so their market for this series is people who do not do that. Clueless kids, clueless parents, simply in search of cool toys, and gods bless’em, they should get to have them, but instead they have this. Everyone who knows better has already moved on to Dart Zone. May X-Shot save their pour souls.
… wait fUCK I forgot to explain the joke with the part numbers being out of order. Ok so basically some of the first few ULTRA blasters were simply named a number, like you’ve got the ULTRA One, ULTRA Two, etc… but they were released out of order from those numbers. I don’t remember what the exact order ended up being, and the One was at least first, but yeah, just kind of a funny thing I threw in there. Honestly releasing the numbered blasters out of order isn’t something I hate, it’s kinda interesting and at least funny, I just felt it’d be fitting to give my rant post a similar treatment :P
