Parents of vikings, buccaneers, ronin and other blade-swingers will tell you Timmy will pick up pretty much anything swordlike and use it to fight his fantasy duels, without regard to such minor inconveniences as safety. You can either indulge his mayhem-oriented proclivities in a safe way or expect that — at the risk of sounding alarmist — that one day Mom might have to put Timmy’s eyeball in a Dixie cup of ice for a quick trip to the hospital.
The safe way would be to buy Timmy a Nerf sword for thirteen bucks.
Basically, the N-Force Sword is a foam sword. An awesome foam sword, 32 inches long — a good size for adults as well as kids. It has a plastic rod going through the center of the blade, keeping it from getting too floppy. It’s firm enough to make for a spirited duel, but soft enough to do no damage when it strikes. I’m not saying you wouldn’t feel it if you got a solid whack, but a nice fuzzy sweatshirt — or even better, some homemade cardboard armor — takes away the worst of the damage.
I tell my kids it’s cool to be safe, and they snort in derision. But in this case it’s true — the N-Force sword (which comes in two colors, the yellow Thunder Fury and the blue Shadow Fury) has an awesome pseudo-anime style that will make any kid proud to wield it. But not just kids… every adult who picks one one of these bad boys immediately exclaims that they wish they’d had one when they were a kid, and then begins fencing with it like they were a kid.
