The rumor that I’m secretly creating a zombie apocalypse to generate demand for flamethrowers is completely false.[64]
I didn’t put a lot of time into the flamethrower, it was an off-the-cuff thing. I have this hobby company called The Boring Company. It started as a joke until we actually made it real and dug a tunnel under L.A. Then other people asked us to dig tunnels and we said yes in a few cases.[1]
We have a merchandise section that only features one item at a time. We started with limited-edition hats that simply said, "The Boring Company."
I'm a big fan of the movie Spaceballs. In it, Yogurt goes through the merchandising section and they have a flamethrower in there. When he holds up the flamethrower, he says, “The kids love that one.”
So I thought, we should do a flamethrower.
Q: Does anybody ever say, “Hey there may be some liabilities with selling a flamethrower?”
Yeah, it's a terrible idea to buy one.
Look, I said “don't buy this flamethrower, don't buy it,” but still people bought it. There's nothing I can do to stop them. I said, “don't buy it, it's a bad idea, it's dangerous, it's wrong, don't buy it.” Still people bought it I just couldn't stop them.
We’d already sold 50 thousand hats, which brought in a million dollars.
So I thought, okay—let’s sell something for $10 million: twenty thousand flamethrowers at $500 each. We did. We sold out in four days.
I didn't spend much time on this. To be totally frank, it's actually just a roofing torch with an air rifle cover—it's not a real flamethrower. That's why we were very clear this is not actually a flamethrower.
Also, we were told that various countries would ban shipping of it, so to solve this problem for all the customs agencies we labeled it, “Not-a-Flamethrower.”[1]