- Hi, I’m Luke.
Today on out of darts, I got a Christmas and birthday present.
The holidays came round, and a few of us were sick at the warehouse here,
so this video is pretty late, considering we are filming towards the end of January.
I have loved nerf since I was a kid.
Nerf came about when I was fairly young.
The Sharpshooter came out when I was in about, let's say, second grade,
first grade -- somewhere around there, and I have been fascinated with nerf ever since.
This was one of the few blasters I actually owned as a kid,
and there are many others that I spent a lot of time drooling over.
So, without creating any more suspense, my employees
my team here at out of darts gave me a Manta Ray.
These are really hard to find, and they generally because they are…
What year is it?
- It's 2022.
- It's 2022; this came out in ‘96, so if I could do basic math, that would be it's 26 years old.
This came out in ‘96 and was only available for
about a year or two; it was not on shelves very long.
I absolutely drooled over the packaging of this.
I looked at it at the store at least every single time I went to the store, and I circled it,
I think, two years in a row in catalogs hoping that it would show up in my stocking.
The Manta Ray was released in ‘96 as part of the Max Force line.
There were quite a few blasters in this line, and to me, this
is part of the pinnacle of nerf blasters because it's very iconic to my childhood.
This blaster was out when I was in about sixth grade; there were a bunch of others in this line.
I do remember a scarab and a scorpion.
I'm gonna read off the rest because I just can't recall them all but.
Oh! The Gator, too!
So, there was a gator.
I remember that, but this was by far my favorite.
When I was in sixth grade, I was absolutely obsessed with marine life.
I was pretty sure I was going to be a marine biologist or an oceanographer or something,
and so this really sang to me.
And I remember just drooling over it for forever.
But there was a Gator, the Manta Ray, the Stinging Scarab, and the Whiptail Scorpion: that's ’96.
After that, there was the Mad Hornet in ‘97.
In ’95, the year before, there was the Sawtooth, the Iron Raptor, and the Warthog.
I remember the second two, for sure.
And then, in ’94, there was the Eagle Eye, the Rattler, and the Razorbeast.
The Razorbeast was another favorite that I never had.
It’s like a ratchety-looking thing; it's got a magazine.
No, it's actually a clip.
It’s got a clip, and it rotates.
My neighbor had that one. It was super fun.
We only had eight rounds for it, and so it wasn't like a giant X-Shot chain or something.
But when you were a kid,
it was pretty darn cool, especially since the competition wasn't super steep yet.
This blaster, like I said, was a gift – holiday/birthday gift, and it's had some
nice things done to it because there aren't a lot of these floating around in good shape.
Greg, our mod tech here, not only did some actual repair which he had to point out.
I couldn't even -- I’m trying to find it again, and I can’t.
He did some actual bodywork on it, but they also used a Cricut to replace the stickers.
So, this sticker down here is the original sticker, but the sticker up here that says
“out of darts” in the exact same style is obviously completely fabricated.
And it's super cool because I had never realized you could do this with Cricut.
It's many different layers.
So, you've got one layer which is that outer circle that's that silver,
and then you've got another circle that's black, then you've got the green,
and then on top of that painstakingly put on top of here is the out of darts custom logo.
Then additionally -- the eyes here on the corner -- they did
stickers for those because those had disappeared.
And then finally, even more amazing: the Manta Ray logo here is not the original.
That's one they printed as well --
And that's a two-layer sticker too.
I thought that was such a nice touch to be able to get those stickers back
and have one custom and just…
Thank you, guys!
Thank you to my guys and gals, I should say.
My whole team here is awesome.
I'm really fortunate to have just a nice group of people to work with.
They all work really hard to get your orders out and take care of you, I couldn't be
more grateful for having them here, and this is just above and beyond.
All of the little intricate sticker work was done by my mod tech's wife,
Rachel, who is also a nerfer and into modding and all of that.
Super cool.
A lot of effort to get those to line up and manually stick them in.
I don't even know how you they got this.
I think they modified the logo because
even the little f here -- the bottom of the f is not even connected to the top.
That's a nightmare to cut out!
But super cool.
Thank you, Rachel.
Let's talk more about the blaster.
So, the blaster's super cool because it's a gauntlet you can fly the Manta Ray.
It primes by pulling away.
It originally took…
I don't have many of these, but it originally took the same darts as the Sharpshooter.
And one of the coolest things about this blaster is it was,
I believe, the first blaster to fire two darts at a time.
Someone correct me in the comments if I’m wrong because that's childhood speculation.
I actually don't want to shoot this side.
I don't want to dry fire it; I already did that once.
So, let's go ahead and fire this here.
It's got some chunk to it.
Given that the efficiency of these older blasters wasn't as good as now.
It definitely is a stronger prime than most blasters currently.
I have a bunch of different ammo types in
front of me here. I thought I would actually test a variety of things.
Those darts are essentially the same as mega,
so the coolest thing about this is that this is already a mega blaster.
Wait.
Oh, I didn't pull far enough.
You have to remember that I didn't actually have this as a kid; I just wanted it really badly.
Let's try actually fire all of them this time.
But you get two shots.
It's like a two partial I can't quite figure out.
I think let's try two of the same this time,
I’m gonna try all four of the same mega, and we'll see how that goes.
This is one of those that like I’ve been looking for a while,
but I just I was just not willing to pay what they wanted.
I believe they bought this off Lance, who's another
local community member here, and he had one, so thank you, Lance, for selling it to them, too.
Let's try to fire all four again here.
That's fun, so if you just really pull, you get all four.
Supposedly…
Now I have not tried this.
I'm not gonna push them in too far because I know there's not
a lot of air volume there comparatively.
I think you can fire a lot of different ammo types out of this.
Let's see if we can do rival or if I’m gonna have to go get pliers.
That was super cool.
We're gonna do that again just because that was…
Now we're gonna have to…
Hold on, can I fire two?
Let's see if we can fire two rival out of each barrel.
That would be pretty sweet.
I don't know if it'll work.
- Careful, Icarus.
- Careful, Icarus,” says Perry!
It didn't go very far.
We'll say it fires one if you don't push them in too far.
Or it fires one out of each barrel, which is four total.
I remember the commercials for this series, and they were over the top.
We'll put footage on here if we can find it; I assume that's somewhere on YouTube.
But the ads were the kind of ads where you'd see the ad on TV,
and you'd jump out of your seat and run up and try to get your parents to go buy you the thing.
I don't know if advertising works like that anymore because the amount of advertising we
all see is just staggering compared to what it was when I was a kid, which was basically
just cartoon advertising. That’s the only time we, as a kid we would see ads.
Now Greg, who did the cleanup and bodywork on this, he did tell me that I could put a
short dart in here, which…
This whole cylinder is tapered, so apparently…
I'm nervous.
I'm gonna put four. We’ll go adventure force pro.
I don't know how far down I’m supposed to squish them;
I really don't want to break my blaster, but we'll try.
Those fired.
Not very far
I would definitely say mega is where it's at.
I'm gonna next try some.
Oh yeah, these are gonna work.
I need one more of the “shall not be named” darts.
Okay, so we're gonna try some ultra.
I’ve got four ultras in here.
I suspect these they feel like a pretty good fit, and I bet you they'll work pretty well.
Well, one fired.
Okay, those don't work well at all.
We probably won't do those ones.
I'm gonna see if I can clear that out.
I have basically one of each stuck in the barrel now.
Well, that's no fun.
Pliers time.
Okay, so we're gonna pull those out of there.
Okay, so ultra is…
Who cares?
Ultra doesn't work.
Then, I’m pretty sure since the short darts did fire,
I can't imagine why these adventure force waffles wouldn't fire.
That's not really an adventure force waffle, but it probably won't matter.
Let’s try left-handed this time.
So, they set this up, so this reads when you're in your left hand.
So, I can have my vintage battle pack here, which is pretty awesome.
Yep, those fired just fine.
I can't wait to play with this in some silly warehouse battle or an awfuls round -- not because
I think it's awful, but because the performance is not on par with what we see these days.
I'm not planning on giving chronograph numbers here.
I think that's kind of silly, but I think this is very fun.
I'd love to hear from you. What was your favorite blaster that you never got that
you wanted as a kid, or maybe you are a kid, and you still want it, and you haven't got it?
I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
Thank you so much for watching; lots more to come!
It's going to be a great year.
I can't wait to get out and play with you all.
Until next time, I’m out of darts!