You feel like you should be storming through the breeched hull of an alien space hulk, or pumping explosive rounds into a jungle encampment so your sniper buddies can pick people off in the ensuing chaos. In part that’s down to the feeling of having something powerful and substantial in your hands. Getting that motordrive spinning up and popping out those first few darts is a deeply satisfying experience. My son, however, needs the shoulder strap to carry the Mastodon for any length of time, which means he can’t hold it as far in front of him as I do. I found it easiest to ditch the shoulder strap and hold the Mastodon a little in front of me to get a better aim – at waist level, though, since this isn’t a blaster you’ll be getting up to your cheek for sighting. Loading up with ammo is as simple as pushing the Mega darts into the open front of the cylinder, turning the cylinder by hand when necessary. You could easily add a Modulus Grip Blaster to one as a back-up weapon, maybe the Blast Shield from the Modulus Strike and Defend kit to another, and, er… A bipod underneath? Yeah, OK, three rails is probably unnecessary, but it’s better to have too many than too few. The Mastodon has a generous three tactical rails: two on top and one below the barrel. ![]() You use your middle finger to rev up the motor and your index finger to set the darts firing. Speaking of the motordrive, its activation button is in the shape of a secondary trigger below the firing trigger, just as it is on the Elite HyperFire, the Elite Stryfe and other flywheel-powered NERFs. One thing to note, though, is that the gun’s motordrive is disabled if the door is slid open at all if you can’t get the motor to whirr up, check the jam door is fully closed. Thankfully, I’ve had fewer jams with the Mastodon than with any other mag-fed NERF gun. Just above and to the fore of the cylinder, on the left-hand side, is a slide-back jam door. And here comes the bad news: the Mega Mastodon requires six D cells. This requires a slot-head screwdriver to undo a pair of screws in order to pull a cover off the left-hand side of the gun. The last stage is to pop in the batteries. A nylon shoulder strap can be clipped onto moulded rings at the front and back, and is adjustable for length – but its use is entirely optional. To help carry this battery-powered behemoth, there’s a swivel handle that slots into the top, just aft of the cylinder. I’m not certain what the point of those two bits is, but the overall look is purposeful. Two dark-grey canopies click in, just above either side of the cylinder, completing the dart feed. Then a protective cage clicks into four holes beneath – this stops the cylinder from becoming damaged if you place the Mastodon on the ground. It’s in three parts, which each slide on until they’ve locked in place to form a complete circle. However, the Mastodon does require more assembly – probably by an adult – than any other NERF blaster I can recall.įirst, the non-removable revolving cylinder needs to be put together. Pulling it out of the box, the main part of the gun is already in one (huge) piece. This thing is big… Seriously, photos don’t really do it justice. A shoulder strap means that, even though the Mastodon is massive, it can be carried around even by NERF warriors at the younger end of its eight-plus age recommendation. And not just any darts, but NERF’s oversized Mega darts, which hit harder and whistle as they fly. ![]() ![]() The Mastodon is a fully automatic beast of a NERF blaster, phut-phutting three darts per second from its 24-round rotary cylinder. Oh, and standard-size darts are for wimps and wannabe sniper weirdos? Right. You want the biggest, baddest NERF gun, eh? And something mobile, not a tripod-mounted millstone like the Elite Rhino-Fire? Got it.
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