Not true.

The toy industry just doesn't work like this.

The Nerf N-Strike Maverick was the first 'realistic' nerf gun on the market and it came out in 2004. It is only 20 years old. Nerf as a brand has existed since 1969, and the first nerf guns were in 1989 and 1992. So from the time of the 1992 Nerf Sharpshooter, it took them over ten years to make a true gun-like nerf gun.

All the nerf blasters between the Sharpshooter and the Maverick were all themed wacky on things like dinosaurs and bugs, or were bows or crossbows. I remember as a kid we used to take the bow parts off of nerf crossbows to make them look and feel more like guns, because the little elastic string and bow arm on the nerf crossbow was purely cosmetic, it wasn't actually part of the gun's action that drove the dart. The only thing the bow arm actually did was hold extra darts.

The toy industry runs opposite of real life war. You can actually tell how close the country is to international conflict by walking through a toy store and seeing how many military toys are on the shelf.

When GI Joes, camo military dress up costumes, toy guns, and gun-like nerf blasters are on the shelf, times are relatively peaceful and the US is only up to its normal "world police" military industrial complex shenanigans.

But the closer the country gets to an actual war, the less popular war toys get. War toys sell in peace time, not war time. The way that nerf rotates their products is not an accident, the real gun nerf blasters come out when we're not scared, but once it looks like WW3 is going to kick off, the dinosaur insect zombie nerf guns come back, because mommy isn't excited about buying her kids realistic gun toys when she's concerned that they might actually grow up and get drafted.