Why you don't see rubber dart blasters any more

Warning this post contains the "g" word

I can not verify all these claims as they are merely my theories based on what I've seen

Do you remember those dollar store dart blaster with non-foam darts? I never really see them in stores anymore. While they were complete crap, it was cool to see that you could get something amusing for a dollar. I recently saw a news report about a toy recall that happened several months ago and now I think I know why they don't sell them anymore. I may not be an expert about toy safety but thats not stopping me, welcome to my interpretation of cheap toy dart blaster safety through out time.

Back in the day, well before I was born, there was a time when safety standards weren't so high. Toys would shoot plastic projectiles shaped like the munition that they were emulating. As long they weren't disturbingly powerful it wasn't a problem. So toy guns would shoot plastic bullets much like this toy or this bad ass monstrosity. But back then kids would shoot each other with full power bbguns and didn't give a crap about safety goggles. You won't find many plastic bullet shooting toys any more because there is an obvious concern about causing permanent damage to eyes.

To make these safer but still appealing, toy manufacturers made suction cup dart guns. People are amused by the suction cups darts but the suction cup is actually a safety device, by having a soft tip much larger than the pupil of the eye it prevents the projectile from poking the eye in a way that may cause permanent damage. Perhaps this was hasbro's concern when they only made blasters that shot mega darts or other large foam missiles back in the day. Anyways dart guns like this became popular.

These weren't as awesome as the other multi-shot plastic bullet toy guns, but they were safe for kids to use without eye protection. They tend to have crappy performance and I believe most toys guns that use spring loaded air plungers tended to have better performance. Speaking of which, there are several other dart types designed for spring plungers, one I tend to see on more realistic looking dart guns are the wide plastic base and rubber suction cup tip darts like the one's on this toy:

I actually own one of these it's worth the money if for ~$2, I think these are fairly safe despite the plastic shaft on the darts because the darts only hit you with the rubber tip. There is yet another more popular kind of dart designed for cheap air plunger blasters, the all rubber suction cup dart like the one with this toy:

Besides the horrible performance these seem pretty safe, but I recently saw a news report about a toy dart gun recall on this toy

The kid was chewing on one of the darts and accidentally swallowed it and choked to death. I believe the dart's narrow shaft easily slip down his throat but the suction cup plugged his airway. Due to it's concave shape, the dart resisted moving back up when he coughed and the flexible head resisted movement from the tongue and esophagus so he choked to death. This explains why haven't I seen any of these kinds of dart toys recently. I believe that you can expect all blasters with narrow stems and suction cup tips to be eventually removed from the market.

What we're losing

First off, I belive the saftey concerns are rather legitimate, especially since the short soft rubber darts are very tempting to chew and a sudden reflex could cause a person to swallow the dart. However without designs like these the future of cheap $1 dart blasters are looking pretty bad. Previously, the narrower stems allowed for the production of smaller cheaper barrels. Now, to keep production cheap, companies use barrels stems that fit inside the darts much like these. the picture you see below is one of the nicer ones. Out of the box the darts fit too tight and often don't even leave barrel stem.

from Nerf Mods and Reveiws

And yes, the tips on those darts are plastic because these blasters are so weak that it doesn't create a safety concern. As a rule of thumb avoid blasters with plastic tipped darts unless you just want scrap parts

Wild Planet's Spy Gear toys have some blasters that use the old spring loaded dart system, like the viper blaster, and the choking hazard explains why they have such an unusual dart tip design. However, it's been put on a list for being one of the most dangerous toys. So I doubt many other companies are going to be willing to take the liability of producing these things

So right now If you are looking for a cheap blaster I would recommend investing in the tek 3 or the Nerf secret strike

the rumored Super Soaker Thunderstorm

Super-Soaker/Nerf is expected to be bringing back electronic water machine guns,

you can see it here on the Urban Taggers blog

these things were a hit back in the 80's, it was a simpler time back then, many of them were shaped like real guns and some made machine gun sound effects when you pulled the trigger example of course nerf is puting thier own spin on the look so it doesn't look like a real gun.
It hasn't been announced in the US, but you can bet it'll make it's way here soon enough, strictly speaking the toy water machine gun never left the market completely there has always been some on the market out there like this and this so the real significance is that a hasbro is making it so these will return to shelves at major stores

HvZ Contest Submission, and Powerpoint

my first post,

Well I saw the Humans vs Zombies contest and decided to enter just for fun. the contest entitled that you submit a video describing your favorite HvZ memory. I believe that the best way to tell a true story in a video that had a short deadline would be in the form of a monologue with flashy graphics describing what's being said.

Well I decided that I would use powerpoint. I am extremely familiar with powerpoint because back in middle school, (when I was even more socially incompetent [even compared to my peers] and reserved than I am now) I would spend my spare time making stupid powerpoint animations of things that I thought were funny back then This was partly because I didn't have video games, cable tv, friend to hang out with during free time at school, or even real animation software along with the patience and artist ability to use it. Nevertheless I became completely familiar with powerpoint.

During my high school freshman year I actually found two opportunities to use my mad powerpoint skillz. One of the powerpoint I made had a mini music video intro a scene selection page and a bunch of bonus features and side animations. Both teachers said that those were the best powerpoints they had ever seen, so of course they would be ashamed to give me anything short of an A for those presentations regardless of the requirements.

Nowadays I still use power point when ever I make simple diagrams to help explain things (eg. explaining a mechanical design to someone on a forum), because for most diagrams I make I don't need anything more than squares and circles along with basic snap to grid adjustment limitations so it turns out symmetrical and neat unlike most ms paint diagrams. I do know how to use other drafting programs like autocad, inventor, and visio, but nothing lets me produce diagrams as fast at powerpoint.

Anyways I made a powerpoint and a script of an HvZ mission I played with Mark. However I never added a Narration for several reasons. First off I was late to submit the video anyways, second my voice sounded absolutely horrible. I intended to have someone else narrate the presentation but I couldn't find any volunteers. In the end I only put in text subtitles and I'm not that happy with the result.

However I did discover an awesome site called authorstream. I was looking for a way to convert the powerpoint into a video and I was directed there. The site is awesome you can view powerpoints in the browser and download them either as a ppt file or a video file. Powerpoint is my specialty so for me this is like discovering image hosting website when your specialty is photography or photo editing. well since the site allows people to view the ppt in their browser I didn't bother convert it in the end after all.

anyways here's the presentation,

Click here

I gotta get to work