I don't get it

While generally our household likes Nerf products, this one feels like a bad design, made only to sell with the Avengers name on it. The reality is that while it can be combined in different ways (sounds fun) there's very little to do with just this piece. Even with more of the toys, it just looks like a bunch of Avengers toys slapped together, mostly a bit crazy. Without, it's basically a glorified foam dart machine. The dart neither flies far nor hits hard, but it's better than some of the 'combinations' which don't fire at all and seem to encourage children to...punch each other. I mean, surely not. This thing has some slight gel padding on the front, but it's still very hard. After all, Hulk does SMASH, but do you want your kid smashing his siblings face...probably not. Well with a fist shaped gun that doesn't fire, that's what happens.

My biggest problem with this toy, by far, is the instructions. They are so difficult to make sense of that two ADULTS got it wrong several times before being able to put it together correctly. So no way could a kid do it. You could argue that a kid would just put it together, by feel, and you're probably right, but there's really no excuse for instructions that are impossible to understand. If the diagrams were clear or gave each part a number or had some text, maybe, but it's really difficult to understand and get the most out of this toy as it is. There are numbers for the pieces and clear visuals on the back of the box, but that only covers one of the ways this toy can be put together.

It's also baffling to me that some of the configurations don't fire. At all. One of them you must unscrew it to reload it. Another has the trigger in a place that it's really difficult to press without scraping your fingers. Simply put, it's badly designed and seems more like a showpiece than a functioning toy or NERF gun. I think if you had a lot of the sets, it would be cool to build it together, but again it reads more as a showpiece than a functioning NERF style toy weapon.

In order to make the dart fire it must be pushed all the way back, meaning you must load two at once, or use one to push the other back. It's finicky and doesn't work well, often firing two at once in a way that implies one should be loaded, but due to the aforementioned thing, you cannot load only one easily.

Overall, I feel like this toy encourages beating each other up and works poorly as a toy gun. I wouldn't personally buy it, but there's no accounting for taste.

Note: It comes with three darts, but only two can be loaded at once.