Spitball Army

Half a block from where I work, a Ninja Fireworks stand sits in the corner of the Raceway filling station. Next door to the Raceway, in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart, a fireworks stand three times the size of the Ninja truck sits. They are called TNT. The fellow at the TNT stand told me that if I go online to TNTfireworks.com, I can print out a coupon to get an additional 20 dollars off of my 50 dollar purchase. (Where do people get the money to spend on these things?)

Here’s the truly odd thing about these trucks: they are parked in the city of Leeds, but Leeds has an anti-fireworks ordinance. Therefore, folks from the surrounding areas are driving to Leeds to buy fireworks and put sales tax dollars in the City of Leeds bank account. This is both wise and crooked on the part of Leeds, in my view. Where I live, in Birmingham, there is also an anti-fireworks ordinance, both for sales and use. This does not prevent residents there from firing off round after round after round on the 4th of July. As a result, on the 5th of July, my Facebook feed is peppered with notices of runaway dogs throughout my neighborhood. Dogs have an inherent sense of right and wrong, and flee from areas where shameless disregard of the law exists. And you thought it was the noise that frightened them.

Inside the Ninja truck, fireworks are piled up in nice stacks and rows. The right-angler in me was immediately attracted to the symmetry on the shelves.

The Patriotic theme is everywhere. Because it is patriotic to blow things up. With unmitigated force. And proudly.

Marketing tactics are sometimes very mystifying.

“Thank you for shopping at Ninja!”