Gyro Strike

The Gyro Strike is a Nerf blaster that was released in 2001.

It comes packaged with six Gyro Missiles.

Details
The Gyro Strike is a battery-operated blaster that uses a basic flywheel system to launch its unique missiles. The handle at the front of the blaster helps to rev up the flywheel. It can have four missiles loaded at once; two extra missiles can be held in missile holders located on either side.

The loading magazine is detachable and can be taken off at any given time; it is not compatible with any other blaster. The magazine itself has slight notches towards the back to allow for missiles to easily be fed into the blaster and not fall out when tilted backwards. There is no cap on the top of the magazine to keep missiles from falling out when the blaster is tipped over.

On the flywheels themselves are swirl patterns which are designed to rotate with the flywheel when firing.

History
The Gyro Strike was filed for patenting on March 21, 2001, likely a few months prior to its eventual release. This blaster was first shown off at a toy fair using a different box and featuring green Gyro missiles and not the yellow missiles that came with the blaster.

The Gyro Strike has an interesting history; it was the second flywheel blaster ever made by Nerf (the Nerf Action Ripsaw was the first). As it was not released within a series, it is generally considered to be a part of the Power Nerf series, the current series at the time.

The Gyro Strike was designed by Johnson R&D at Larami, most notable for producing the Super Soaker and miscellaneous Nerf blasters in the late 1990s including the Blast Fire DX500 and the SuperMAXX line. Using a company called Designstream during the mock-up phase, the blaster was originally pink and orange, featuring a much more militaristic design and weighing fifteen pounds. After various stages of redesigning and slimming the blaster down, however, the finished product barely resembles the in-house prototype designs. Another minor design change that would eventually not see the final release of the blaster is the inclusion of white-bodied missiles, something that would eventually change to green before finally seeing release in yellow.

Modification
There is very little modification opportunity with the Gyro Strike whatsoever. Because of the nature of the blaster, opening it via unscrewing the pieces is somewhat of a problem as screws are found on all sides of the blaster in various sizes. As a result of this, opening this blaster is more of an ordeal than any result that could be achieved by opening it in the first place as it is likely to be incredibly difficult to close the Gyro Strike.

Trivia

 * The Lanard Rev Shot is very similar to the Gyro Strike. It replicates nearly the entire design of the Gyro Strike even down to the layout, ammunition size, and detachable loading magazine. It is unknown if ammunition from the Rev Shot is cross-compatible with the Gyro Strike.