Happy Nerf Day!
I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I put on the news and heard several reporters and anchors doing stories about Nerf Day. It’s good to see the Nerf toy brand finally getting the recognition it deserves. I’m old enough to remember the original Nerf toy which was the Nerf basketball that came out in oh, probably about the early 1970’s. It was basketball you could play indoors with a hoop that could be easily hung on the back of a bedroom door. The genius advertising behind the ball was that you could throw it around indoors without breaking furniture, lamps, the dog etc. Of course what they left out is the damage a tightly contested game of one on one might do as kids themselves collided with furniture, lamps and the dog.
The next innovation was the Nerf football. This was the perfect toy for an elementary school kid in the 1970s since our generation was being schooled in the hippie-dippy, feel-good “everyone is special” and “anyone can do anything” manner that has led members of my generation to drugs, booze, suicide or countless hours of therapy after they figured out that no, they really weren’t special or talented and working really hard to achieve something wasn't enough in the real world. Here’s a note to the educational system: never letting kids fail causes them to be woefully unprepared to deal with reality. They will fail and struggle and be miserable at various points unless mommy and daddy are financially able and willing to cushion the blows of the big mean world. One of the greatest examples of good parenting I’ve come across is a friend of mine who was upset over the fact that the tee ball league his kid played in wouldn’t keep score. Why? Because he wanted his kid to learn how to lose because in real life you don’t always win. That’s very rare and very heartwarming to me (though know if I actually get any comments from parents it’ll be the “you don’t have kids, you don’t understand that you should always want them to win” variety).
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the Nerf football. The genius of this toy is that it gave everyone a rocket arm. In fact, it was the great equalizer because any kid who could really throw a ball far was unsuccessful in the Nerf game because no kid could run fast enough from the line of scrimmage to catch a ball thrown that far. Therefore the less physically talented were more successful than the more physically talented. It was a perfect toy for the “everyone is special but therefore no one is” generation. Of course, when you got older and tried to throw a real football it weighed roughly 526 pounds in comparison and you were barely able to chuck it slightly farther than the average shot put. Make your own allegory.
As we progressed into the 1980s where Atari and PC games replaced any real sports activity Nerf didn’t leave the lexicon. Rather, a whole subgroup of Heavy Metal music typically called Hair Metal swept the popular music airwaves. Some of us in the music geek subdivision called it Nerf Metal because like Nerf toys it was lighter and less challenging than the real thing. Anyone with a working knowledge of rock history knows that Nerf Metal was wiped from the charts in 1991 with the release of “Nevermind” by Nirvana who were three guys from Seattle who obviously grew up playing with Nerf toys like so many of the rest of us. Ironic, isn’t it?
Today Nerf has moved boldly into the 21st century. The big products appear to be Nerf guns and accessories including something called Nerf dart tag which appears to be a way to play paint ball without the actual bruising that comes from being hit with the paint pellets. Nerf also makes protective sleeves for video game controls so you can throw or smash them to your heart’s content without breaking. Nerf is cushioning the world and protecting all kids from feelings of failure.
Happy Nerf Day everyone!
The next innovation was the Nerf football. This was the perfect toy for an elementary school kid in the 1970s since our generation was being schooled in the hippie-dippy, feel-good “everyone is special” and “anyone can do anything” manner that has led members of my generation to drugs, booze, suicide or countless hours of therapy after they figured out that no, they really weren’t special or talented and working really hard to achieve something wasn't enough in the real world. Here’s a note to the educational system: never letting kids fail causes them to be woefully unprepared to deal with reality. They will fail and struggle and be miserable at various points unless mommy and daddy are financially able and willing to cushion the blows of the big mean world. One of the greatest examples of good parenting I’ve come across is a friend of mine who was upset over the fact that the tee ball league his kid played in wouldn’t keep score. Why? Because he wanted his kid to learn how to lose because in real life you don’t always win. That’s very rare and very heartwarming to me (though know if I actually get any comments from parents it’ll be the “you don’t have kids, you don’t understand that you should always want them to win” variety).
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the Nerf football. The genius of this toy is that it gave everyone a rocket arm. In fact, it was the great equalizer because any kid who could really throw a ball far was unsuccessful in the Nerf game because no kid could run fast enough from the line of scrimmage to catch a ball thrown that far. Therefore the less physically talented were more successful than the more physically talented. It was a perfect toy for the “everyone is special but therefore no one is” generation. Of course, when you got older and tried to throw a real football it weighed roughly 526 pounds in comparison and you were barely able to chuck it slightly farther than the average shot put. Make your own allegory.
As we progressed into the 1980s where Atari and PC games replaced any real sports activity Nerf didn’t leave the lexicon. Rather, a whole subgroup of Heavy Metal music typically called Hair Metal swept the popular music airwaves. Some of us in the music geek subdivision called it Nerf Metal because like Nerf toys it was lighter and less challenging than the real thing. Anyone with a working knowledge of rock history knows that Nerf Metal was wiped from the charts in 1991 with the release of “Nevermind” by Nirvana who were three guys from Seattle who obviously grew up playing with Nerf toys like so many of the rest of us. Ironic, isn’t it?
Today Nerf has moved boldly into the 21st century. The big products appear to be Nerf guns and accessories including something called Nerf dart tag which appears to be a way to play paint ball without the actual bruising that comes from being hit with the paint pellets. Nerf also makes protective sleeves for video game controls so you can throw or smash them to your heart’s content without breaking. Nerf is cushioning the world and protecting all kids from feelings of failure.
Happy Nerf Day everyone!
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