Nerf Wrist Flyers from Parker Brothers (1977)
Aim. Squeeze. And watch it fly!
As part of its continued expansion of the Nerf product line, Parker Brothers released Nerf Wrist Flyers in 1982. Marketed to children ages 5-12, the set included three pre-assembled delta-wing gliders and a wrist-mounted launcher. Each glider was decorated in a patriotic motif and was made of the same polyurethane foam as other Nerf products.
After slipping the launcher onto your wrist, you’d place a glider on the launch tube and squeeze the rubber bulb for lift-off. The packaging included simple instructions on how to “tune” the flyers to make them travel farther. Spoiler alert: slightly bending them made them more aerodynamic.
Buoyed by the set’s initial sales success, Parker Brothers introduced Super Powers Wrist Flyers a year later. In this set, the three gliders were adorned with images of popular DC Comics superheroes: Wonder Woman, Batman, and Superman. The box also contained an official entry form for a Supers Powers sweepstakes contest that would feature the winner in a future issue of a DC comic book.
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