How Nerf Became the World’s Best Purveyor of Big Guns for Kids Super SmartNote

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Nerf Nonlethal Rounds

Every year Nerf faces a new challenge. How can we make our product better? Nerf sells their own line of ‘Blasters’. Nerf’s first goal to achieve was to make guns. Big guns. Rapid-fire guns. For kids. Thats right, for kids, you might be thinking ‘why create such a thing? Could kids get hurt with this? Why even think of such a device. Why? Because they could. In 2002 Nerf hired Brian Jablonski as a product design manager. (He figured he’d stick around for a couple years, then move on to another job.) But the company who owns Nerf, Hasbro, thought he was to good to leave. And he was. The only thing better than being good at your job is being good at it and loving it. Jablonski did love it. He had said: “working on Nerf stuff was sort of like waking up every day and driving a Mister Softee truck... [it made you] a protector of the cherished childhood memories of multiple generations.” When Nerf was created in 1970 its vision was not to do anything like it does today. Nerf was making footballs, basketballs, etc. But making a gun for a kid to safely use was definitely their biggest challenge. And the inspriation for these things does not just fall out of the sky. Jablonski does not just look to video games and movies but things like salad spinners and the coin slots on washing machines. Over the years a Blast a Ball game had turned into a Barricade RV-10 gun for kids the ages of 8-16 to use. All of Jablonski's products are tested with kids he says: "When you put a toy in the hands of an eight-year-old sometimes they tell you things you didn't expect." The evolution of Nerf must have been a fun experience. Something only a few people get to enjoy. 

See the article from Weird Magazine.