let's go let's go
okay hello everyone my name is brett and sometimes i wear a beret and i love foam flinging
entertainment when i first got into the hobby as a teenager i loved finding different types of it
online and because there are so many different ways to enjoy toy blasters there are so many
different types of entertainment that people have created and continue to create like right here on
youtube you've got videos with heavy after effects to simulate something more realistic
staged gameplay with first person views and crazy environments footage from actual nerf games and
anything else you can think of depending on your age you might find some types more cringy than
others but at least they're trying their best at least they're willing to put themselves out there
and create something but what has nerf put out in the past well quite a lot actually dart tag league
in championship of 2009 funnier dive sketches dude perfect challenges animated zombie strike stories
firing darts in slow motion nerf nation show of zach king the nerf ultra one championship please
don't make me talk about that one nerf's catalog of foam flinging entertainment is extensive and
frankly all over the place and while not all of it may appeal to you it is interesting to see
what they put out as an entertainment marketing strategy yeah i should clarify i get that all
of this content exists to sell toys the goal of a toy company is to sell toys i'm not saying that's
a bad thing i'm just saying that's what it is and it doesn't have to be a bad thing if they make
stuff that's entertaining for me to watch and i can get invested in it i see no problem with that
if it's very heartless soulless marketing that is clearly trying to push a product and nothing else
then i'm not going to be on board with it and i think most of us will see right through
and not really be interested or even entertain even creators not affiliated with nerf
who use nerf blasters or products in their content inadvertently advertise
for nerf so i have to believe it isn't all heartless marketing because technically then
this video would count and i swear i'm not that's not the point of this and i think some
of those previous nerf videos i mentioned do qualify as entertainment for me because
i've enjoyed watching them and there's nothing wrong with that but we're not here today to talk
about the ones that worked we're here today to talk about the one that did not work and that is
nerf house nerf house premiered in march 2020 on youtube and on instagram from nerf official and
one of the series stars julian edelman's channel the description from hasbro newsroom is as follows
nerf has launched a five-part video series called nerf house featuring renowned athletes including
julian edelman juju smith shuster jamal adams joe burrow christian mccaffrey and the new nerf ultra
2 blaster living under one roof and learning the true meaning of its nerf or nothing oh i
bet and the ultra 2 is a character now cool does it talk does it also play for the nfl in the nerf
house the only rule is that there are no rules ah okay maybe a few rules you can check out episode
1 on julian edelman's ig tv with new episodes launching every thursday pretty vague overall
other than it's a five-part series featuring five nfl stars and the nerf ultra 2. i mentioned this
was posted on youtube under both julian and nerf's channel because for the five of you saying bret
nerf's youtube channel is marked as four kids so you can't be critical of this series well
julian's channel isn't worked that way the only reason that nerf official is marked as a four
kids channel is because they had a little incident not too long ago you may have heard of it before
the series is intended for all audiences and i will be judging it as such but before i dive any
deeper into these videos i would like to establish a couple of things number one i have nothing
against the five nfl players who are starring in nerf house they seem like generally good people
and i'm sure they're having the time of their life doing this i mean who wouldn't want to be a part
of a nerf video like just playing with blasters and probably getting paid i have no idea how much
input they had for some of their lines or the script overall so i'll reserve judgment on that
but again i have nothing against these guys they seem like genuinely good dudes living the best
life i'm just jealous right second thing is that this is clearly a professional filmmaking job and
it is not comparable to a standard youtube video like you're watching right now i understand that
making this kind of a production work requires a lot more planning a lot more scripting every
piece coming together is a completely different scenario and it has a lot less creative control
than just me sitting in front of something and making a video for youtube i get to say whatever
goes into this video again the athletes may not have too much control even the people who are on
set may not have had control over certain aspects i have no idea how it came to be but i respect
the people who put the effort in to make it look as good as it does because i can't do that i'll
never be able to do that quite frankly no offense to the people who were in it no offense to the
people who worked on it but with that said i do need to talk about this a little bit more because
there are five episodes as mentioned in nerf house and i came up with five general points to kind of
summarize my main critiques and here we go point number one the house is barely used the series is
called nerf house it starts and ends with a static shot of a large fancy house why do i feel like we
never get to see the full potential of this house we see the outside a few times so i have no reason
to doubt that they are actually on location but we almost always stay in one room for
the particular skit so if you told me that this was actually filmed in separate sets and just
pieced together i don't know i i may actually take you up on that conspiracy theory the most you see
of the house is in episode 5 which is a behind the scenes episode so that shouldn't even count
imagine you have a giant house at your disposal with a few friends and endless blasters and darts
what's the first thing you think of no seriously not a trick question what's
the first thing you would think to do in that situation what's that have a major
full-scale house battle congratulations you're right and you have more creativity than nerf
house does because they never do that they never do anything that would actually use
the maze of rooms that the house clearly has to offer even the outside is it really that hard to
come up with fun nerf related ideas for a giant house team death match zombies capture the flag
i mean think about it you have all this room at your disposal wouldn't those be interesting to see
i know they'd be interesting to see why because i've already seen them
right here on youtube technically there is nerf and technically there is a house so the title
nerf house is not a complete lie no instead it's just the bare minimum point number two episodes
are short this isn't necessarily a bad thing or an uncommon thing for nerf videos but it's true
nerf house episodes are pretty freaking short they average between two to four minutes with episode
five being the one exception at four minutes and 14 seconds in total these five episodes
are 15 minutes and 12 seconds and i'm willing to bet that this video that you're watching right now
is going to end up being longer than that not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing just is what
it is but that total should come with an asterisk because if you're looking for original nerf house
content and not fluff we have to take some stuff out each episode has the same introduction that's
about 30 seconds and add anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds and then typically a next episode teaser
around 20 seconds now since the teasers almost never pan out they never go anywhere i'll include
that with original nerf house content despite these episodes appearing to be short they're
actually even shorter and so the real total for all five of these episodes is closer to
11 minutes now this breakdown may seem unnecessary because obviously quality is
more important than quantity these may be the most important videos you've ever seen in your life
ever well fortunately every other point i'm talking about quality so in this case i am talking
about quantity the reason that the duration of these videos bugs me so much is because
nerf made a big deal about this series they got a full camera crew an expensive location nfl players
um to bring us the pinnacle of foam flinging entertainment and this is it how many hours
how many days did it take you to film just to get 11 to 15 minutes i don't know the budget of nerf
house but if it was my money i would be really disappointed with only getting this much out of
it maybe there is more footage there waiting to release or maybe it really just was filmed in
a day eight hours i may never actually know the answer but we've got feels so limited that it's
impossible for me to get invested in this series uh there's not enough for me here to feel like
i know anything about these guys outside of their favorite blasters and actually that's
i don't even think i know that one the first time i watched these videos i was genuinely surprised
that episode five was a behind the scenes episode and then it just ends and i was like
oh i guess that's it okay point number three an ad within an ad i did touch on this feature a little
bit in the previous point but i do believe it deserves its own recognition as i mentioned from
the beginning i get it a toy company wants to sell toys just make it interesting make me care and
that's what nerf house is right the intent is to be an advertisement i get it but
there's there's an ad within this advertisement in each nerf house episode there's a built-in
commercial break not an ad break where they can throw in an ad and it might be something else
no no it's in the video we'll be right back after these messages it's anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds
depending on if it's an ad for the ultra 2 or for ultra screamer darts so not very long but it's
clear they're showcasing a particular product the ads themselves aren't bad but each ultra
2 ad features a different nfl player showing that their favorite blaster is the ultra two
which is kind of weird but then it also ends by saying that professional athletes are sold
separately and i do think that's kind of funny for the sonic screamer darts julian yells again
but then obnoxious screaming is not included it's self-aware and i do appreciate that obnoxious
screaming not included these ads seem like something that nerf would place on platforms
like youtube or instagram or heck even run during commercial breaks on television nothing wrong
with that even if they're used to advertise the nerf house series but why include them
in nerf house videos isn't it weird to pause everything that's happening in the video you're
watching for an ad about a blaster that's in the video that you're watching it's like hey look at
this thing look at it look at it look at it ad within an ad adception i just it's just so weird
i don't like it point number four the teams i shouldn't have to complain about this because it's
the most basic concept there are two teams in nerf house orange and blue orange has three teammates
while blue has two why are the teams unequal sizes come on does it make sense to have the
same number of players on each team wouldn't that lead to better matchups or at least the perception
of competition when i was first watching i thought joe was a wild card player because he's always
wearing a gray t-shirt juju and julian are always wearing blue sweatshirts while christian and jamal
are always wearing orange sweatshirts but no joe's always got an orange bandana on his head
so that makes sense seriously why go to the trouble of matching team outfits when this
is the result he looks so out of place in the center as well i really don't get it you may also
assume because there are teams that any house antics would be between orange and blue well
in episode 1 the orange team smears peanut butter on julian's ultra 2. alright cool god dang it and
then the only full-on battle in episode 4 does see the orange team take on the blue team until julian
decides to fire at literally everyone and declare himself the winner other than that we really only
see joe and christian messing with each other and they're both on orange so i gotta ask
what's the point of having teams maybe just give everyone separate color shirts and tell them to
go for it it's like the teams only exist when the script requires them to this feels like such
a petty thing to rant about but the more i think about it the more perplexed i get seriously if you
establish teams clear-cut teams at the beginning of the series then the script should really start
writing itself point number five nothing happens all of my complaints up to this point sit on the
foundation of nerf house's primary problem nothing happens it's boring there's no story to follow and
there's no personality to the show or the athletes half the time the guys are literally just sitting
around looking bored but with nerf blasters reading in bed eating cereal eating peanut butter
and nerf ultra was there dang it watering plants sitting in a freaking tub and nerf super soakers
were there pouring cereal but oops all ultra darts never seen that idea before is this really what
you want as long as there are five recognizable stars or athletes on screen are you entertained
because i'm not you've got five well-built dudes and an endless supply of nerf blasters
and darts so naturally you try to make the shortest sitcom ever or is it a competition
and then by the end we're asked who's going to win nerf house and i have absolutely no idea
what winning even means in this context the first the final the only battle between orange and blue
shows pieced together action shots with everyone getting hit until they decide that these shots
count and a winner is crowned looks like i wanted nerf house winner where'd he win how
did he win these things too much to ask for did he win an ultra too gotta be because my ultra two
blaster i should have paid attention at the beginning because rule number one was there are
no rules i guess that means there's no structure and no purpose while nerf house fails to impress
me on many levels i have to admit i don't find the series to be cringy sure there are some moments
but most of the time it's tolerable good night ultra too boring doesn't equate to cringy and
come on they'd have to try really hard to include something that could make me think
otherwise it had to be much worse it's certainly not something that you can do in five episodes
no i i don't wanna nope you know about it who told you i have been
lying to you a little bit there's a sixth episode they didn't say there was but technically there's
an unofficial sixth episode and i don't want to talk about it but if you've seen it you know what
i'm talking about it is uh it's a music video that surprise it's called don't eat the darts and it is
um one minute and 44 seconds of your life that you will not get back don't eat the darts just
there is so much to unpack here is this music
oh my gosh why does this exist also wait a minute who's this guy yeah the the guy with julian
has he been here the whole time or do you just decide to show up for a day are you telling me
we could have had even teams this whole time if this guy just showed up hey look more footage
more footage that could have been used but nope save that for the music video our camera
chemistry is terrible right now oh he said it not me wasn't me this video makes me want to eat darts
in conclusion nerf house fails to deliver on almost every front this is some of the most
disappointing content i have ever seen from nerf and i'm not exaggerating there imagine if it had
been good that would have been a win for everyone but no and i hold nerf to a high standard because
hasbro has basically dominated the toy blaster industries since i can remember but if they want
to call themselves the number one blaster brand and go around unironically saying it's nerf or
nothing they gotta prove it they gotta prove it to me they gotta prove it to you they can't just
meh here's nerf house if anyone from nerf or hasbro is watching right now
hi i'm brett if you know that i exist you're probably not very happy with me right now i know
i wasn't very nice on nerf house and you probably think i'm just a nerf hater it's not true you want
to know what my favorite series was within the past two years the nerf nation show with
zach king i'm not joking i i really enjoyed it i thought it was genuinely entertaining the episodes
still aren't too long but they're fun they're pleasing to watch and overall entertaining zach
king brings a great level of energy and does an excellent job not taking himself too seriously
you can tell he's having a great time with his team also a giant nitro car and i want it i've
talked enough about nerf house for today but i am curious to hear what you guys think is this
the first time you've ever heard about nerf house or have you already watched through the series
if you have and you think i'm completely wrong let me know in the comment section down below
i'd love to hear some of those arguments they did already make in nerf house season two
and if you'd like to hear my thoughts on that let me know as well because it is a little bit
different than this season one maybe it got better maybe it got worse let me know if you'd
like to see the follow up thank you everyone so much for watching and i'll see you next time you