Nerf Has A Mascot Named Murph And It’s A Nightmare
This thing will rob you of sleep for weeks.
This article is more than 2 years old
Have you ever thought to yourself, “The problem with mascots for brands targeted at children is that they don’t inspire enough night terrors?” If so, don’t worry — the decades-old Nerf has introduced the new mascot Murph. And Murph looks like the kind of thing that you have to convince your children isn’t waiting in their closet or under their bed before they’ll get to sleep. Murph looks like they could be an optional boss in Elden Ring. Nerf’s Murph, we’re fairly certain, would take out at least three-quarters of the cast in a slasher flick.
Decider’s Alex Zalben tweeted a photo the new Nerf mascot Murph, and we’re fairly certain that, upon seeing the photo, you’ll agree with our assessment that Murph looks like a kind of unfinished version of McDonald’s Grimace — a prototype, failed Grimace who now steals the souls of children who put their for-here trays in the garbage. You can see the tweet below.
Zalben produced more shots of the Nerf Nightmare known as Murph. As Zalben points out in his tweets, in these next images Murph is “completely naked” with one of Nerf’s guns. Without the orange shirt and orange sneakers from the above photo, this commando on the ground version of Murph is reminiscent of what would happen if a virus grew arms and legs and joined a special ops team.
Nerf’s Murph has their own catch phrase: “unleash the play in you!” We’re not sure how they could possibly say that without it being muffled by what appears to be the least comfortable and most cumbersome costume in the history of people pretending to be soulless, murderous monsters. However, it does seem likely that unleashing “the play” has something to do with chasing teenagers through abandoned building and serving their remains to railroad dogs.
As you can no doubt tell, the inhuman beast meant to represent Nerf is made out of hundreds of Nerf darts. According to IGN, the ill-conceived Nerf mascot Murph is completely sexless and genderless and uses they/them pronouns. With no ears, eyes, nose, or mouth it isn’t clear how this Lovecraftian horror has managed to communicate their pronouns to anyone, but we can only assume that A) Nerf has a wonderful human resources department, and B) Nerf’s HR department includes “vomitous monster” in its classification of “human.”
IGN spoke to Nerf’s Senior Vice President and General Manger Adam Kleinman to find out how many goats were sacrificed to bring the Nerf mascot Murph into being. Kleinman said that Murph is a “playful spirit and gifted athlete.” He went on to say and Murph represents “ageless, unbridled fun that lives in all of us,” and described them as “a physical embodiment of that feeling you get when you play with Nerf.”
The good news is that Nerf’s Murph is almost certain to attract some new accolades to the toy brand — namely, the honor of being forever known as one of the worst mascots ever created. For example, Wonderslist put together their own top 10 list of the ten worst mascots, and we’re fairly certain Murph can blow all of them away. We won’t lie, the New Orleans Pelicans’ King Cake Baby may give Murph some trouble, but the visceral terror and nausea inspired by Murph will destroy fellow bad ideas like Speedy the Geoduck and the Fighting Pickle.
