Get yer Musk flamethrowers here!
Now selling on eBay for as much as $6,000.
To hear Elon Musk tell it, the Tesla and Space-X CEO’s foray into flamethrowers was no flameout — he sold all 20,000 of the $500 units in five days.
Announcing the news on Twitter early Thursday, Musk said the flamethrowers bearing the logo of his Boring Company tunneling and infrastructure venture would ship with a complimentary fire extinguisher. The sellout would represent roughly $10 million in sales. Musk’s flamethrowers were listed on eBay for prices as high as $6,000 later Thursday.
The tech entrepreneur made good on his offer to sell units over the weekend after buyers snapped up 50,000 Boring Company hats. Sales moved briskly from the start, Musk indicated via Twitter. By Monday alone, he said his company had rung up $3.5 million in flamethrower sales. Buyers may have been motivated by an Instagram video that showed Musk wielding one of the units and running toward the viewer.
There are no federal regulations against domestic manufacture or use of flamethrowers, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed in an email statement this week. But California prohibits flamethrowers that have a reach of more than 10 feet, and Maryland has a total ban.
Musk got heat from California Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, a Los Angeles Democrat who said he would introduce legislation to block sales of Boring Company flamethrowers.
“This subject matter, in the wake of the state’s deadliest wildfires in history, is incredibly insensitive, dangerous, and most definitely not funny,” Santiago said in an email to The Washington Post. “Absolutely no public good could come from the sale of this tool.”