The least enjoyable part of a friendly Nerf battle isn’t getting hit, it’s constantly having to stop to reload your blaster. The inconvenience improved with Nerf’s Rival line, which debuted in 2015, but for 2021 the company is introducing a new Hyper line of blasters that fire smaller foam balls so you’ll be spending even less time reloading.
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The Rival line wasn’t the first time Nerf turned to foam balls as an ammo alternative to darts, but the real appeal was that it could hurl those tiny spheres (which looked like soft miniaturized golf balls) at speeds of up to 70 MPH, or around 100 feet per second. Not fast enough to leave a bruise, as paintballs can, but enough speed that you’d want to actively avoid getting hit during a shootout. For its new Hyper line, Nerf redesigned those foam balls with a new bouncy material that flies farther and faster, although the bump in speed to around 110 feet per second now isn’t the real appeal here.