Zippo Manufacturing Company: Playing With Fire

Playing with fire? The popular flip-top lighters made by Zippo Manufacturing Company are on tour and hitting nightclubs across the county. Two men, Tricksters Booty and Mr. Twistyneck, use the lighters in a stage show where the two tricksters demonstrate tricks that can be done with the lighters in an attempt to promote the product and the company. However, some people, including the president of the National Fire Protection Association, James M. Shannon, say the tour, and the Web Site www.zippotricks.com, are not only promoting the Zippo lighters, but fire play.

Shannon wrote a letter to the president of Zippo, Greg Booth, on June 3, asking him to considering taking down the Web Site that teaches, in detail, more than 500 tricks that can be performed using the lighters, as well as reconsider the 10-city nightclub tour. The tour began in April, just months after the nightclub fire in Rhode Island that claimed 100 lives and injured close to 200.

In a press release from NFPA, which released the letter from Shannon to Booth after failing to receive a reply from Zippo, Shannon wrote, "NFPA encourages you to reconsider this campaign and abandon all promotions, tours, and Web Site material connected with it. Promoting fire play is not the type of strategic marketing the public would expect from Zippo Manufacturing."

Firehouse.Com was unable to reach Booth, but in the July 17 issue of The Washington Post, Booth is quoted saying that he does not believe the tour or the Web Site is promoting playing with fire. According to the Post article, Zippo, founded in Bradford, Pennsylvania in 1932 by George G. Blaisdell, took over the Web Site that was not affiliated with Zippo, but had been up for six years, in an attempt to