Hasbro NERF M41-A Pulse Rifle

Mine arrived today!! I'm in Australia and pre-ordered it through a local online retailer EB Games.
My review follows:
It's gorgeous. The box is a nice green cardboard, designed to look like a rifle case, with Colonial Marines branding and some cool Acid burn-holes through it. The back has Weyland Yutani and ARMAT branding on it.
It opens up with a schematic of the rifle on the inside of the lid and nice cardboard cutouts to hold the rifle and darts in place.
The darts are standard Nerf darts, though in a cool gunmetal-coloured foam with bronze rubber tips. They're not bullets but they look a little better than the usual neon colours. The Magazine holds 10 darts and clips in exactly like in the movie and is super satisfying. The Grenade Launcher uses the larger Mega darts and comes with three. They aren't breach loaded or anything, you slot them in the front of the barrel, prime the pump and they shoot. But it's still cool.
The Ammo counter works beautifully. When you pull the magazine out, it zero's out with two horizontal lines and when you insert the Magazine it restores the displayed total. And there are little buttons to the side of the counter so you can set what total you want to display. Set it to 93 and it will count down to 83 as you fire each dart and go back up to 93 when you refill the mag and reinsert. There's no on or off switch that I can see it just powers off after a few minutes of inactivity.
The sound effects are meh, and a little quiet. It uses one of those electric flywheels for the main rifle and you hold down the smaller trigger/button under the main Trigger to charge it up, then pull the main Trigger to fire. The flywheel is kind of loud and drowns out the firing sound, and it's not the iconic Pulse Rifle Sound, it's just a generic fake gun firing sound. Squeeze the trigger once for single shot or hold down for auto fire. It's got a pretty good range. I haven't tested it outside yet or anything but I shot my son in the back from across the room (heh heh) and I could hear the thud as it impacted. He was not happy.
Stick a "Grenade" (Mega Dart) in the front under the barrel and prime the pump and it too fires with decent range and an explosive "thumping" sound effect, again, not super accurate.
I have no idea if it has any other sounds but I think its beeped at me occasionally.
The paint scheme is exactly as expected. It's "inspired by the Power Loader" scene from Aliens, so yellow with black hazard stripes. Not ideal but Nerf is never going to make a toy that's coloured anything like a real gun so this is a decent alternative. I'll be painting mine up anyways. Most of the logos, markings and lines on it are just painted on. The only ones that are embossed are the two you really don't want, that aren't in-universe at all - the NERF and Aliens logos. This is pretty standard I think for Nerf toys and it's only the two NERF logo's on the main body (which should be easy to sand smooth) and the Aliens logo on the recessed barrel part, which will be a little trickier but not insurmountable.

In terms of accuracy, it's pretty damn amazing, especially for a NERF toy..
The cut-outs in the lower Grenade launcher barrel are moulded in, not fully cut out, though the vertical cutouts on the top rifle barrel are open. You might be able to dremel out the holes, though I don't know enough about NERF to know if that will affect the firing/plunger of the grenade launcher.
The muzzles are a little off. The firing rifle barrel is an additional lower piece not present on the prop, and what would be the real muzzle looks more like a small scope or laser targeter. At least that's my head cannon.
The butt of the magazine is a different shape but I think that's a design choice to make it easier to insert and remove. It makes sense and is easier to grab than the prop's magazine would have been.
Otherwise, the moulding, fake screws and rivets are mainly in the right spots, and the clips and clamps and small details are pretty accurate. A few things are slightly off or out of position, there's not the exact correct number of cut-outs on the grenade barrel etc but for a NERF toy, it's an impressive attention to detail.
There's a crap tonne of screw holes to be filled in on the reverse (which is kind of unavoidable for a toy) and an additional panel of Legalise text that will have to be sanded off and filled in. But even with that, this side is great, including different moulding around the trigger guard and grip modelled off the prop. It blows my mind that they actually went to the trouble to mould in the different details for both left and right sides of the prop.
The battery chamber is to the rear of the rifle on this side and still manages to be pretty nicely moulded in. When painted up, it should be a pretty dark colour scheme and properly weathered and beaten up the seams for the battery compartment shouldn't be all that visible. It takes 4 x "C-Cell" batteries and the battery compartment is a good size. I can totally imagine pulling out the plastic battery holder, installing a Li-on battery pack and drilling a small recessed hole in the underside of the butt of the rifle for a charging port. Just need to confirm the voltage requirements and ensure that any over-voltage or fluctuation won't fry the rest of the electronics.
It's got decent weight to it, though not nearly as heavy as I imagine the real pulse rifle would be. The plastic feels dense and solid and I think it will stand up to use pretty well.

I'm going to start sanding off the paint and logos this weekend, roughing up the overall surface for painting and detailing. It's a pretty simple paint scheme so hopefully, it won't be too hard, but I'm super slow at this kind of thing and have at least 5 other builds going at the moment so it probably won't be finished any time soon.
I'm trying to decide if I need to bother disassembling this or can just mask it up and paint it as is. Normally I try to separate pieces and paint it disassembled, but this is basically a two-tone paint scheme (black and green/brown) with weathering and some small detail work. I think if I can avoid opening this, I'll be able to fill in all the seam lines and screw holes, and not risk mucking up the electrics. Part of me wants to look into installing a larger speaker but I'm not sure I wanna risk mucking this thing up, especially given the sounds aren't accurate. I may unscrew it, carefully open it and take a look inside. If it's too complicated, I'll just seal it back up and paint it as is.

If anyone has any questions or wants photos of particular parts or details, let me know.

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I guess this confirms that the sound fx are weak. From the original ad/solicitation: "We’ve also included film-accurate blasting sounds with every trigger squeeze."
 
I have no idea how or why we Aussies lucked out with early deliveries . Usually we’re one of the last to get anything.
I guess this confirms that the sound fx are weak. From the original ad/solicitation: "We’ve also included film-accurate blasting sounds with every trigger squeeze."
Sadly the sounds aren’t accurate. That and the loud flywheel kind of defeats the purpose of the sounds to me.

Sanded off the logo’s - wasn’t too hard in the end. Already started with first coat of primer. Not gonna disassemble.- just too complicated internals and too much change of stuffing it up. Plus if I get distracted halfway through I don’t want disassembled parts strewn everywhere.

In terms of play potential, it’s true it only comes with one magazine and that seems custom built for this prop. It does take standard darts though and it does fire a pretty long way. Inside my house it was going at least 10-15m (the largest straight stretch I could find) and still fairly level and hitting well at the end. I haven’t mucked about with NERF stuff before so no idea what’s the expected range for something like this but it seems pretty decent. With the sounds and flywheel it’s definitely not a snipers weapon.
 
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Yeah, that doesn't look bad at all, even with the Nerf logo. The Aliens one I could do without though...:lol: Just checked my order and it still says ships on Oct 1st. :(
 
I'm in Australia and haven't heard anything about them being in stock or that mine is on its way.
Interesting.....

EDIT
Hahaha, literally the second after I posted this, I got an SMS to say my Pulse is ready for collection!

So where in Australia can I buy one...???
 
Your best bet would probably be eBay... They went on pre-order a year ago. It was one of those HasLab projects, like the big Razorcrest ship from Mandalorian.
 
We don't have GameStop, but we have EB Games which is owned by Gamestop and they have a separate pop culture store called Zing which sounds like they will be stocking the Nerf Pulse in October 2022....apparently.

Can't pre order at the moment, so will have to wait.....
 
We don't have GameStop, but we have EB Games which is owned by Gamestop and they have a separate pop culture store called Zing which sounds like they will be stocking the Nerf Pulse in October 2022....apparently.

Can't pre order at the moment, so will have to wait.....
I pre-ordered mine through Zing almost exactly 12 months ago. It arrived this week. Not sure if they order extra stock and sell them online after release or if it’s only available through Pre-order. Depends on the item I think.
I pre-ordered a HasLab exclusive Unicron from EB Games a couple years ago and they never had any models for sale in store, it was exclusively through the ore-order. That was more of a crowd-funded one though.
Hopefully some additional pulse rifles are available. This seems way to cool and popular product to be limited to a single exclusive Pre-order.
 
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That looks great! I’m going the light brown colour for mine. I prefer the olive drab like yours but I need to match the motion tracker I have on order from Hollywood Collectables, so tan it is.

Did you fill in the screw holes on the back? There’s a lot of ‘em!!
 
I pre ordered the day they went up and then it said October ’22 delivery. NERF made in Australia? That painted up one looks pretty decent. A little weathering and it’ll be a fine display.
 
I pre-ordered mine through Zing almost exactly 12 months ago. It arrived this week. Not sure if they order extra stock and sell them online after release or if it’s only available through Pre-order. Depends on the item I think.
I pre-ordered a HasLab exclusive Unicron from EB Games a couple years ago and they never had any models for sale in store, it was exclusively through the ore-order. That was more of a crowd-funded one though.
Hopefully some additional pulse rifles are available. This seems way to cool and popular product to be limited to a single exclusive Pre-order.

That is so weird. There's no reference anywhere on Zing to the product and the only reference through Google is that Zing will have them available in October 2022....strange that 12 months ago you could pre order and have it now....cool, but weird....:unsure:
 
Why are some saying there is no sound but yet you see on these pre orders there is sound ? Lol
There’s sound but it’s not the Pulse Rifle sound from Aliens or the grenade launch from Aliens. If I had to guess, they’ve pulled generic sounds from another NERF gun or even from a sound bank That and the flywheel is really loud so even those sounds are drowned out.
That is so weird. There's no reference anywhere on Zing to the product and the only reference through Google is that Zing will have them available in October 2022....strange that 12 months ago you could pre order and have it now....cool, but weird....:unsure:
Zing tends to pull listings down once Pre-order has ended I think.
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It’s great and is painting up really well so far.
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There’s sound but it’s not the Pulse Rifle sound from Aliens or the grenade launch from Aliens. If I had to guess, they’ve pulled generic sounds from another NERF gun or even from a sound bank That and the flywheel is really loud so even those sounds are drowned out.

Zing tends to pull listings down once Pre-order has ended I think.
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It’s great and is painting up really well so far.
So how much did it cost once landed...??...$200...???....I'll just keep my eyes peeled on Zing to see when and if they land in store...
 

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