So I had to buy this thing at the thrift store, because it's got an 8-dart capacity and decent pump-action ergonomics... even though the internal trigger catch is clearly broken and it won't stay primed.
Anybody seen one of these? There are NO markings molded into it to identify a copyright, year, manufacturer, or country of origin.
Oh snap, I just had to scroll further to find some results that match, since apparently "Hover Blaster"s have been released with lots of different blaster designs, and this one doesn't perform very well even when the trigger catch ISN'T broken...
One for sale has some blurry-ass pics of the packaging so now I know it was sold by Ideal, at least.
Here's an eBay listing that has some larger images of the box. No years or anything, but the Ideal Toy Company ran until 1997. Oddly enough, it would seem part of Ideal would fold into Hasbro UK, and Alex Brands would go on to purchase the rights to the Ideal name!
A Google search wants to auto-complete with other products - hockey, soccer, baseball... so it seems that "SureShot" is a brand/series of toys for them.
I really wish the packaging had any year of reference on them, because I'm interested to see when it was produced, considering that everything technically halted in 97!
OMG, some great memories ! Ideal® was huge when I was a kid. I had an Ideal brand Evel Knieval action figure and Jump Cycle. Rev it up and jump over sofas and chairs. (and dogs, siblings, and flaming piles of newspaper) What a blast !
I don't know the exact year, but your Hover Blaster is definitely from Ideal, or possibly the very last days of Tyco. The first dart blaster was introduced in 1992, and Ideal ceased in 1997, so it must have been sometime within those five years, most likely toward the end. The Micro Dart didn't come out till 1993, and it took a couple years for the Rip Rockets to gain any real traction. So a knockoff blaster like the Hover Blaster was probably from 1995 or 1996. Just a guess based on very old memories. But I hope it helps ?
It looks brand spankin' new, I never would've dated it as being 25 years old. Somebody musta broke the trigger latch on the third or fourth time they used it and then threw it into storage until it finally got donated.
