Tag Archives: Iain Delaney

Toy Review: NERF Amban Phase-Pulse Blaster

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This is not the way. – me

By Iain Delaney: In the Star Wars universe, the Amban Phase-Pulse Rifle is a modified sniper rifle capable of disintegrating its targets with a single shot. The bounty hunter Din Djarin (the titular Mandalorian) carries one to impressive effect during the first two seasons of the Disney+ series.

In our universe, though, the Amban Phase-Pulse Rifle is a disappointing, over-priced, inaccurate toy replica of the TV series prop. It starts off promisingly, with dark packaging ornately decorated and lettered in gold. Opening the box reveals a large plastic tray holding the blaster. Hasbro obviously made this product before they switched to plastic-free packaging.

The blaster is 50 inches long, making it probably the biggest Nerf toy ever made, but the designers did not take advantage of the added length. The first thing you’ll notice is that the colors are wrong with a lot of white broken up by splashes of orange. And, unlike the Aliens Pulse Rifle Nerf Blaster, it’s not a coherent color scheme. Unlike other blasters in the LTMD line, this is a disappointing look.

The disappointments continue in the features: there are almost no special features in the toy. The “sniper scope” which has an electronic display in the show, is useless on the Nerf toy. It’s opaque and its one function is a small, red LED in one corner. It’s a bit of a joke, really.

The loading and cocking mechanism is unique but cumbersome. You pull back on the cocking handle which opens the breech. Insert one Nerf dart into the breech (the toy comes with ten), close the breech, and push the cocking handle back to its starting position. The rifle is now ready to fire. Pulling the trigger launches the dart and then you have to repeat the process. So the blaster is one of the least efficient, most expensive Nerf guns on the market.

Unlike the Aliens M-41A Pulse Rifle, there are no electronic displays or sound effects. And at $150 US, 50% more than the M-41A’s $99.95, the Amban Phase-Pulse Rifle is a terrible deal. The market has realized this, and there are new copies of this ’Limited Edition’ still for sale, and heavily marked down. Even at discount prices, I can’t recommend this toy to anyone, hardcore Mandalorian fans or otherwise.

Iain Delaney was born in the UK but moved to Canada at an early age. The UK heritage explains his fascination with British TV SciFi, including Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, UFO, and, of course, Dr. Who. After fumbling through high school, he fumbled through university, emerging with a degree in physics. With no desire to pursue graduate studies he discovered that a bachelor’s degree had little to no job prospects, so he took up a career in computer programming. In his off time he reads, watches TV and movies, collects toys, and makes attempts at writing. To that end he has a small number of articles published in role-playing game magazines and won two honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest. He is working on an urban fantasy YA trilogy and entertains delusions of selling it to movies or TV.

Toy Review: NERF Pulse Rifle

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I want to introduce you to a personal friend of mine. This is an M41-A pulse rifle. –– Corporal Hicks, Aliens

By Iain Delaney:The M41-A “Pulse Rifle” has been an iconic sci-fi movie prop since they released the movie Aliens in 1986. The interest in the prop has endured even though, apart from Alien 3, it has not appeared in any subsequent Aliens movie. When fans learned it was derived from a Thompson machine gun and a SPAS-12 pump-action shotgun, cobbled together and wrapped in fibreglass, they immediately built their own replicas. Prop studios followed suit and high-priced replicas have been available for years now. But no one has released a toy version, compared to the wealth of toy Star Trek phasers, for example.

Until now. Hasbro has introduced their “Aliens M41-A” Nerf Rifle, a reasonably faithful replica of the movie prop that is also a functional Nerf dart gun. The toy is packaged in a cardboard box decorated with military markings, alien claw slashes, and holes made by acidic alien blood. Hasbro’s high-end collectible toys always seem to have great packaging and the Pulse Rifle is no exception.

Inside the box is the rifle itself, ten standard Nerf darts, three Nerf “Mega” darts, and the first major disappointment. In order to keep the toy more “parent-friendly” or for some equally strange reason, the pulse rifle has not been painted in its normal olive drab and black colors. Instead, Hasbro choose to paint it white, yellow, and black; colors “inspired by” the power loader from the movie. Many fans have bought the Nerf Pulse Rifle and re-painted it to the prop-accurate color scheme.

Other than that, there is very little to complain about with this toy. Insert 4 “C” batteries, load the darts into the clip, and fire away. Press the button to start the motor and pull the trigger to shoot one dart at a time or hold it down for continuous firing. The iconic ammo counter on the side actually works; counting down every shot that leaves the barrel. And each shot is accompanied by an electronic sound effect, supposedly “movie accurate”, but I didn’t think it was that close.

The grenade launcher works, too. Put a “Mega” dart in the launcher, pump the action, and pull the trigger forward of the magazine. The dart is launched with another sound effect.

This is a Nerf toy for fans of the movie, not hardcore Nerf fans. The magazine’s capacity is too small, and the toy is too cumbersome to use in Nerf skirmishes. But for Aliens fans who want a reasonably accurate prop replica that’s also a lot of fun to play with, the Nerf M41-A more than fills the bill.

The Nerf M41-A Pulse Rifle is available from https://hasbropulse.com for $99.99 (US).

Iain Delaney was born in the UK but moved to Canada at an early age. The UK heritage explains his fascination with British TV SciFi, including Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, UFO, and, of course, Dr. Who. After fumbling through high school, he fumbled through university, emerging with a degree in physics. With no desire to pursue graduate studies he discovered that a bachelor’s degree had little to no job prospects, so he took up a career in computer programming. In his off time he reads, watches TV and movies, collects toys, and makes attempts at writing. To that end he has a small number of articles published in role-playing game magazines and won two honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest. He is working on an urban fantasy YA trilogy and entertains delusions of selling it to movies or TV.

Toy Review: Staff of Ra Headpiece

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A bronze piece, about this size, 
with a hole in it, off-center,
with a crystal. – Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark

Review by Iain Delaney: The Headpiece of the Staff of Ra is the secondary Maguffin in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s the item that guides our hero, Indiana Jones, to the location of the titular Lost Ark of the Covenant. Indy first finds the headpiece in the possession of Marion Ravenwood at her bar in the Himalayas and takes both of them on his quest in search of the Ark.

42 years after the film’s debut, Hasbro Toys has put out the “Staff of Ra Headpiece”, part of their “Indiana Jones Adventure Series” of collectible toys. The Staff of Ra Headpiece is available in various toy stores, online shops, and directly from Hasbro Pulse. The list price is $50.99 (US).

The packaging is a simple cardboard box covered in images and graphics. There’s a large picture of the headpiece on the front and next to it is a still from the movie of Indy using the headpiece in the map room at Tanis. The back of the box has more pictures and descriptions of the features of the headpiece. The box notes it uses plastic-free packaging, which is a nice innovation after decades of injection molded plastic and tie downs or twist ties.

Inside the box is a cardboard tray holding the three pieces of the toy and the instructions and warnings that always come with an item like this. The three pieces are the headpiece, a piece of the staff about four and one-half inches long, and a base made to look like a small piece of the floor of the map room. Let’s look at each part.

Although it is detailed and screen-accurate, the headpiece appears plastic to me. A coat or two of bronze paint would have fixed this, but the lighting effects make it nearly impossible to do this after the fact. Still, it looks pretty good. The detail is all there, with the inscriptions, the phoenix (I think it’s a phoenix, the movie didn’t specify) and the crystal in the center. The size, from what I can tell, is the same as the movie prop and the proportions are similar.

The staff is a clever little piece of trickery that lets the headpiece light up by channeling light from the base to the headpiece. It has a notch on the top that the headpiece slots into and a socket on the bottom that plugs into the base. There’s a concealed triangular push button on the staff to turn the lighting effects on and off.

The base itself is another piece of plastic, molded to look like sandstone. On the underside is a battery compartment for 2 AA batteries. You’ll need a small slot or Phillips (cross-point) screwdriver to open the battery compartment, which is pretty typical for higher end toys.

With the batteries installed, assembly is very simple. The headpiece clips into the top of the staff, and the staff drops into the center hole in the base. Now the center jewel and the individual markings light up, as if each was separately lit. It’s a very impressive effect. The light turns itself off after about fifteen minutes; I assume to save battery life. This means you can’t use it as a night-light, which is too bad.

The only thing missing that I can think of is a chain so that you can wear the headpiece around your neck. It would make a nice cosplay accessory, so I guess the right kind of chain, plastic or metal, would work.

Overall, I’d say this is a very nice, screen accurate display piece; easy to find and reasonably affordable. The only way you could do better is to buy a real metal replica from Etsy or a similar website, and then you’d be missing out on the lighting effects. If you have room on your shelf next to your worn fedora and bullwhip, I strongly suggest considering the Staff of Ra Headpiece.

Iain Delaney was born in the UK but moved to Canada at an early age. The UK heritage explains his fascination with British TV SciFi, including Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, UFO, and, of course, Dr. Who. After fumbling through high school, he fumbled through university, emerging with a degree in physics. With no desire to pursue graduate studies he discovered that a bachelor’s degree had little to no job prospects, so he took up a career in computer programming. In his off time he reads, watches TV and movies, collects toys, and makes attempts at writing. To that end he has a small number of articles published in role-playing game magazines and won two honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest. He is working on an urban fantasy YA trilogy and entertains delusions of selling it to movies or TV.