Nerf Sawtooth Review (3/10)

Old school tacticool.

This is a blaster that's been on my bucket list for ages and I finally got the chance to snag one in very good condition. This is the 1995 Nerf Sawtooth and it has the very unique distinction of being the first clip fed Nerf blaster in history and if it weren't for this, modern staples like the Longshot and Retaliator may have never existed in their current form. Let's see if this old thing stood the test of time.

Size compared to the Electric Eel.

The Sawtooth is kind of a weird blaster coming from the Max Force line as it has a very inorganic look to it unlike it's successor; the Electric Eel. It's fairly large for the time and it's kind of battle rifle styled looks seemed to lay the groundwork for much of the tactical themed blasters we see today. Hell, even the scope comes off and mounts onto the front as a barrel extension. This thing truly was N-Strike long before that was even a thing.

Stock collapsed and barrel attached.

The shell is remarkably comfortable with a good sized grip and a kind of built in vertical foregrip below the barrel. You also get a collapsible stock which has a surprisingly decent length and shoulders well too. It's load bearing capability however isn't great and I found that trying to right hand prime the blaster using the stock as a support will cause it to unhinge itself and potentially break, so left hand priming without using the stock as a brace is advised.

The Sawtooth clips have one extra dart and you get a pair.

The Sawtooth uses nearly identical clips to the Electric Eel though these seem to be made of a more flexible plastic and have no dart posts. A common fault I've heard often about the Sawtooth is it's tendency to jam but I found this largely has to do with how you insert the clip before priming the blaster. The issue seems to stem from the Sawtooth having a far less pronounced detent when you insert the clip so it's far easier to screw up loading the blaster. The Eel's detent is a solid spring loaded piece of plastic whereas the Sawtooth's is stupid bent piece of metal hotglued into the shell. After being so used to the how the Eel feels, loading the Sawtooth really does feel like crap by comparison.

The Sawtooth might be the roughest priming blaster I've ever used.

The blaster's performance really doesn't do anything to better it's kind of finicky loading. Racking the bolt on this thing feels like throwing a wrench into a running engine. It's loud as hell but there's a certain satisfaction when you see the clip index into position. I also really like how the bolt handle auto-returns, which is never the case with newer bolt action blasters. That being said when you pull the trigger, the Sawtooth just lays an egg. The darts fart out of this thing at barely 20 feet tops which is eerily similar to how the Electric Eel performed when I first fired it. Granted these are over two decade old internals with certainly no recent lubrication so I was hardly surprised. I can't even fully say the rate of fire is good, which it really is especially for the time, but you have to pull back on the bolt slightly to be able to pull out the spent clip. Goddammit.

Internals are very similar to the Electric Eel but... with more GEARS.

The internals of the Sawtooth are nearly identical to the Electric Eel with the biggest difference being the plunger rod and clip system are driven by this huge ass rack and pinion gear train that just gives me anxiety by looking at it. I mean, the plunger rod is directly pulled back by fucking gears. I've never seen anything like it and no wonder it's so noisy. This also means that spring upgrades run the risk of shredding every inch of functionality from this blaster unless you do something as daft as convert it to direct pullback like the Eel. Oh and lookie there; a hole in the plunger tube. Fantastic!

Problem mostly solved.

That being said, I do see the potential here. Again, I'm super nervous about adding more spring power to this thing, but you can probably get away with plugging the hole in the plunger tube and re-barreling the clips. I tested this with the CPVC barreled clip I already made for my Electric Eel with the Sawtooth's stock internals and the change in performance was through the roof. The plunger is about Nite Finder sized but with Elite darts, it was shooting harder and further than the Eel with the same clip. I don't know if the Sawtooth has a stronger spring or something else but this is a welcome surprise.

Unfortunately mod potential isn't taken into account with my overall opinion of this blaster and needless to say, the Sawtooth pretty well sucks. It looks really cool and brought some genuinely novel ideas to the table at the time, but didn't quite get them right in execution. The smaller Electric Eel fixed many of these problems but it too was still bogged down by the lackluster performance that plagues these blasters. Regardless, the Sawtooth is probably one of the most important blasters Nerf has ever built because most of the groundbreaking ideas this blaster presented back in 1995 are now regular features with many blasters today. The Sawtooth may score a pretty lousy 3 out of 10 as it stands today but back then, this was glimpse into the future.

The Verdict

Class- Clip Fed Rifle

Range- You'd be lucky to hit 20 feet.

Reliability- Clips are finicky to load and the blaster may not index them properly as a result.

Ammo- 5 Mega Darts

Modding- The amount of gears in this thing makes me sick. Re-barreling the clips works absolute wonders though.
Value- Most examples go for roughly $25 to $45 bucks on eBay.

Is It Better Than?

Electric Eel- Depends, these two are so similar it's hard to say really. The Eel is essentially a Sawtooth cut down to it's bare essentials. It's more reliable, has more mod potential, and even comes with a neat battery operated muzzle flash for use with glow darts. The Eel however suffers from the same lackluster performance the Sawtooth has and personally, I think the Sawtooth has a comfier shell. The choice is yours.

Battlescout- No, the Battlescout is one of the few modern spring powered blasters to still feed from an old school indexing clip and while it's performance still isn't quite up to scratch with most of the modern magazine fed springers on the market, it's far better out of the box than the Sawtooth. The Battlescout is pretty compact for a pump action although the side mounted clip is a little bit awkward and similarly sized mag feds like the Mediator blow it out of water in terms of bang for your buck.