mass. mailing misfire

Fireworks co. agrees to stop targeting Bay State

Phantom Fireworks says it won’t advertise its explosive wares in Massachusetts anymore after AG Maura Healey slapped the company with a “cease and desist” letter — though the pyrotechnics company couldn’t resist shooting back at the Bay State’s restrictive laws.

“As a courtesy to the Attorney General’s Office, Phantom has discontinued further mailings into Massachusetts,” the Yougnstown-based fireworks company said in a statement Wednesday, a few hours after Healey threatened them with “legal action” if they didn’t stop mailing advertisements to locals.

The company added, “We find it ironic that Massachusetts, the birthplace of former U.S. President John Adams, the author of the most iconic fireworks quote in American history, is the only state in the U.S. that totally bans the use of consumer fireworks.”

Adams, who was born in what was Braintree but is now Quincy, once wrote to his wife Abigail Adams that Independence Day “ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Healey had put the company on blast with a “cease and desist” letter she sent Wednesday. The AG said Phantom, which has stores in states where fireworks are legal like New Hampshire and Maine, was being “deceptive” by marketing to residents of the Bay State, where fireworks are illegal.

“Phantom Fireworks’s intentional targeting of Massachusetts residents at their homes in Massachusetts with offers to sell them fireworks is a prohibited unfair and deceptive act and practice that violates the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act,” Healey said in interstate missive. Phantom said it provides a disclaimer in its Massachusetts mailers that fireworks are illegal here.

Fireworks advertisements from Phantom sent to Bay Staters touted, “Buy 1 get one 1 free” offers and other deals, according to examples collected by the AG.

Over the past two months, the number of fireworks complaints in Boston have skyrocketed. Complaints were up 5,543% over the first 23 days of June, with Boston police logging 7,844 calls in the first three weeks of the month compared to 139 during the same time last year.

The nightly bombardment sparked Boston Mayor Martin Walsh to create an illegal fireworks task force last week.

Ap pHoTos INCOMING: John Chandler, above, and Art Spielman, left, who both said they were from Massachusetts, are seen at Phantom Fireworks last week in Hinsdale, N.H. Phantom has agreed to stop mailings to Bay State residents, since fireworks are illegal here.