No child ever wants to feel left out of the game their friends are playing, and thankfully a major toymaker is expanding their lineup so everyone can have fun in their own way: Nerf is releasing a conscientious objector certification for kids who are too sensitive to participate in a Nerf war.
Wow, we wish they’d had this when we were growing up!
While plenty of kids love letting the foam fly in an all-out Nerf war, other more delicate kids may view the act of raising a dart blaster against another human being as fundamentally at odds with their own ethical understanding of the universe. In less enlightened times, these sensitive, live theater-enjoying kids would be branded wusses or total dorks for their refusal to unload a 15-dart clip into their shriek-laughing classmate Mason, or worse, be forced to put their own moral well-being at hazard by reluctantly pelting Mason with darts even though they find Nerf wars scary and overstimulating. But thanks to the new Nerf Conscientious Objector Certifications rolling out this summer, these dart blaster-averse kids can at last exempt themselves with dignity while they go into another room to watch baseball with their friend’s dad until everybody else gets tired enough to want to order Domino’s or watch Minecraft tutorials on YouTube.
Kids seeking the Nerf Conscientious Objector Certification will undergo a thorough application process to prove that their aversion to high-octane dart-blasting mayhem is grounded in a sincere belief that it’s nicer to collect dandelions for make-believe wizard potions or build little havens for caterpillars out of twigs, and not just a matter of convenience. For instance, a child who was happily potshotting his buddy Cody with a Nerf Alpha Strike Boa RC-6 would not be able to suddenly claim conscientious objector status just because his six-dart rotating drum had run dry and Cody was about to light his ass up with a fully motorized Nerf Elite Titan CS-50’s rapid-fire 50-dart barrage. But a timid child who loves reading and practicing drawing cartoon characters who would probably just ruin the whole Nerf war by crying the second somebody so much as grazes his shoulder? That child would be approved to receive Nerf 1-A-O Conscientious Objector papers he could then display to the other kids, who would appreciate that he’s indirectly assisting the Nerf war effort by not putting himself in a situation where he hyperventilates and freaks out so bad that somebody’s parent goes and shuts the whole Nerf war down for all of them.
What a cool idea. We hope Nerf sells a ton of these!
“We’re always trying to tweak our blasters to strike faster and shoot farther, but this innovative addition to our product line is here to bring Nerf to the sensitive kids who would rather forgo blasting entirely to twirl around the yard with a bubble wand,” said Hasbro in a press release, adding that they’d consulted dozens of real-life conscientious objectors to make their paperwork feel as authentic as possible. “Not every kid wants to hear the whistle of a Nerf Mega XL dart sailing above their head as they scramble to reach cover and unleash a pump-action airblitz salvo of their own, and we respect their right to go off and work on a 1,000-piece Frozen 2 jigsaw puzzle instead. Now they can finally live by their beliefs and purchase a Nerf product that accommodates their personal refusal to participate in simulated combat, allowing them to engage in gentle activities better suited to their comfort levels, such as make-believing they’re jungle animals or quietly solving logic puzzles in Brain Quest books.”
It’s great that Nerf’s open to shaking things up like this. Here’s hoping more toy companies will find ways to give sensitive kids an out from the games they find loud and upsetting!
