Total Sci-Fi has attended hundreds of zombie-based events over the years (and by ‘hundreds’ we mean ‘four’), but two of our favourites were definitely: battling the undead in Hamleys with NERF blasters (click here); and fleeing from zombies beneath London Bridge (click here). So naturally we jumped at an event that combined the two. Forget Alien vs Predator – this is the crossover we’ve been waiting for…

First things first. Whatever they may look like, you should never, ever, under any circumstances, describe a NERF product as a "gun".

“No, we don’t like to call them guns,” explains a NERF-spert from Hasbro.

Of course not – they’re just toys, right?

“We don’t like to call them toys either.”

Ah. So what should one call them? Shooty-foam things? Plastic barrels of soft yellowy goodness? Propellers of bright sponge?

“Call them blasters.”

Blasters! Of course!

With the terminology lesson out of the way, it’s time to embark on a lesson in, well, blasting. We head to the firing range in one of the dark caverns that makes up The London Bridge Experience. This time the range of guns – sorry, blasters – includes the new fully-automatic NERF Stampede ECS-50, allowing you to dispatch slow-moving monsters faster than ever before.


Training over, we enter the main murky maze itself. It’s not long before groaning flesh-feasting fiends/jobbing actors are leaping out at us from behind walls, from behind closed doors, from behind crates, from behind pig carcasses. Actually, it’s Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre who pops up behind the pig carcasses; we’re not entirely sure what he’s doing in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, but we fire yellow bullets at him all the same.

On emerging into the gift shop at the end of the maze, we approach some Hasbro bods to see how we did. After all, the team who dispatched the most zombies with the most ammo to spare wins a prize.

“Well, you beat Men’s Health Magazine,” the NERF-ministrator informs us. We punch the air. “But you were beaten by the BBC. Oh, and Nuts Magazine beat you too.”

Beaten by Nuts? We hang our heads in shame, and go to drown our sorrows in red wine. Next time, Nuts, we’ll out-NERF you, just you wait…

For more information on NERF visit: www.hasbro.com/nerf

For more information on The London Bridge Experience visit: www.thelondonbridgeexperience.com

Words: Matt McAllister. Images by Simon Jacobs.