Best lawn darts

That last row is the entire modern category. A soft-tip set is legal precisely because it fails at the thing the original did well: it does not spear the turf. If a listing promises you weighted metal points and “just like the original,” it is describing a banned product.

NERF Soft Tip Lawn Darts — best overall

Four soft-tipped darts and two targets, from a brand with more to lose from a safety story than anyone else in this category. Two targets matters more than it sounds: the original game was two circles and alternating throws, and a single-target set quietly becomes something else.

Franklin Sports Soft Tip Target Toss — the sports-maker option

Franklin builds the flag football set and the children's badminton set we rate elsewhere on this site. This is the same engineering applied to a ring-and-target throw. It publishes less than we would like, which is why it sits second.

JOYIN Glow in the Dark Lawn Darts — for after sunset

Lawn darts is a game of watching an arc land, which is the first thing you lose when the light goes. A glow set extends the evening without floodlighting the whole lawn. See playing yard games after dark for how to light a target properly.

1. Legal to sell. Soft tip, not designed to stick. Anything else is not a product we will link to.
2. Two targets, not one. The game is alternating throws at opposing circles. One target is a different, lesser game.
3. Published contents. How many darts, how many targets. It is a low bar and only one of the three clears it fully.

No maker here publishes a throwing distance, so the footprint is a decision rather than a specification. The sensible reference is the game this most resembles: horseshoes fixes its stakes 40 feet apart under NHPA rules, and a soft-tip dart carries far less than a 2 lb 10 oz shoe. Most households land between 20 and 30 feet.

If you want the fixed-distance, published-rules version of this shape, that is horseshoes — we compare them directly in lawn darts vs horseshoes. For the rules of the modern game and the safety brief worth reading out loud before the first throw, see lawn dart rules and safety.

Because no maker in this category publishes a dart weight, the first throw is the specification. Three things are worth checking before a child gets hold of the set.

1. Does the tip compress? Press it hard against a table. A legal soft tip gives. If it is rigid enough to dent skin, it is not the product the CPSC carve-out describes and it should go back.
2. Does it fly nose-first? Throw one in a high arc onto grass. A dart that tumbles rather than settling into a point-down arc has its mass in the wrong place, and no amount of practice will make it land predictably.
3. Do the targets stay put? Plastic rings skate across mown grass. If the set ships pegs, use them; if it does not, a tent peg through the rim is the fix.

If what you actually wanted was the weighted, precise throwing game the original was, buy horseshoes instead — it is that game, it is governed, and it is legal. Washer toss is the lighter version of the same idea at about half the distance.

Dark by five from mid-October, which is when this question starts. The soft-tip glow sets worth buying, how the two glow mechanisms differ, and why the target is usually the thing you cannot see: glow in the dark lawn darts.