Is FireBlaze a Scam? (Yes! Here’s Why) - Krazy Ken’s Tech Talk
- This lighter uses no gas to create that flame. Yeah, it's all electric. At least, that's what the ads say. So is this thing a scam? Yeah. Yeah, it is.
But now let's find out why. (upbeat music) Hey everyone, how are you all doing? If you're new here, welcome. My name is Krazy Ken, and lately I've been receiving a lot of tips about this military grade electrical lighter named FireBlaze, and it all started with this Tweet that Kenny sent to me.
Something didn't seem quite right, but I can't just call something a scam based on feeling alone. We need to examine the facts and look at the science. So let's start by dissecting their video ad. This YouTube ad is titled "Next-Gen Fire Technology in Your Hands," like literally in my hands, like a pyrokinetic? The ad opens up by saying Amazon hates this lighter, but there's nothing they can do to stop it. There's a new electric lighter that has the power of a military grade flamethrower, and it's already been banned from Home Depot, Amazon, and Walmart. Introducing FireBlaze.
It's unlike anything you've ever seen. It's been in all the major newspapers, including NBC, Fox News and CNN. But why is this product so groundbreaking? It's because it doesn't use butane or gas.
Instead, it runs off Ion Pulse Technology producing an 1800 degree plasma flame, powerful enough to burn through metal in seconds, and it's fully electric. It's windproof, waterproof, and it can start a fire anywhere no matter the conditions. And after years of classified use in the military, the patent expired and now civilians can get their hands on it.
But be warned, it could be banned again soon because the U.S. Product Safety Committee thinks it's too powerful for everyday folks to own. So get it while you can. Use it for camping, hiking, grilling.
Don't deal with those weak lighters anymore, come on. FireBlaze is eco-friendly, no toxic... gase-es, no harmful chemicals, and you can recharge it with USB. One charge lasts up to 300 uses. So here's the deal. FireBlaze refuses to be sold through big retailers, so get it today through this ad for 50% off before it sells out again.
Okay, so the big takeaway here is the flame is, what? Maybe about seven inches long, but it doesn't use butane or other gases? Okay, I have my doubts, but hey, I've been wrong once before. There's multiple issues with this ad. So let's break it down. There's three main issues I have with this ad. First is the military backstory.
The ad says FireBlaze was originally designed for the military and its use was classified until the patent expired. However, no matter how hard I searched for this patent, I could not find it. And FireBlaze also does not provide a source. (air rumbling) (popcorn pops) That combined with all of the other fake backstories we've seen in other investigations, makes it very likely that this military backstory is a bunch of poppycock. When was the last time I said that word out loud? I also surveyed multiple veterans through my network, and none of them have heard of this FireBlaze product while in the military. And I don't mean to split hairs.
Well, actually I do. There is a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, but I'm not aware of a committee.
Again, I could be wrong. Ooh, maybe it's a secret government project. You know, like the one that's keeping me trapped 10 stories underground, yeah. By the way, what is up with that? Why is that still happening? I've been doing this for years. When can I leave? What am I even doing this for?!?! (lounge music) The next problem is the press.
I searched for FireBlaze news stories with FireBlaze in quotes with all three networks mentioned in the ad, and I found zero results. So my educated guess is that these advertisers just made up this claim for social proof. They're saying, "Hey, these big guys trust this brand, "you should too." And it is a legitimate marketing tactic. Social proof is usually fine, but in this case, they're just lying.
Speaking of lies, the ad also says FireBlaze is not on Amazon. - [Announcer] It's already been banned from Home Depot, Amazon, and Walmart. - It's on Amazon. And the third problem is the biggest problem. The no gas claims. FireBlaze probably uses butane because there's literally a refill valve on the bottom, but we will just pretend we didn't see that for now.
Electric lighters do exist, but they're often smaller and they produce tiny plasma arcs as opposed to a larger flame like we see in the ad. Okay, wait, hold on one second. I have a feeling we're gonna be hearing the word plasma a lot today. So let's define it plasma.
(thunder crashes) What exactly is plasma? Plasma is a state of matter, like solid, liquid and gas. And plasma is an ionized gas, but not all ionized gases are plasma. Okay, so what's an ionized gas? An ionized gas is a gas made up of ions, which are atoms with a positive charge.
Atoms usually have a positively charged nucleus with a certain number of electrons, which balance the atoms charge, making it neutral. However, if the gas is hot enough, particle collisions can strip some electrons from atoms. These atoms now have a positive charge and are referred to as ions. So in short, plasma is an ionized gas. But again, not all ionized gases are plasma. Now, in the context of FireBlaze's plasma claim, unfortunately there's no universal scientific agreement as to whether or not fire is truly plasma.
There is a lot of variables. 1800 degrees Fahrenheit would make it less likely that the fire from FireBlaze is plasma because it's too cool. But I cannot say definitively.
Plasma claims aside, to create a flame this large from a device this small, we need a fuel, i.e. butane. There is no battery powered, no gas lighter that I know of, which can just magically produce a flame that's this big. But I'll give FireBlaze a fair shot. When it arrives in my layer, I will test it. But let's ignore these ion pulse and plasma claims for a moment, okay? Even though the FireBlaze is most likely not fully electric, that doesn't mean it's completely free of electricity. If FireBlaze is similar to other butane lighters that have been around for decades, there will be an internal hammer that strikes a piezoelectric crystal, which generates a spark, as opposed to using flint like on some other lighters.
Piezoelectric crystals generate an electric charge when pressure is applied. The Greek root piezo- means pressure. There's various types of piezoelectric crystals out there, but we'll take a look at a very abundant one, quartz. Quartz is composed of silicon and oxygen atoms. In this molecular structure, oxygen and silicon atoms share one electron.
Naturally, oxygen atoms want to exert a stronger force on electrons. So in this case, the electron is held closer to the oxygen atoms nucleus than the silicon atoms nucleus. And since electrons are negatively charged, this means the oxygen atoms are more electronegative than the silicon atoms resulting in a partial negative charge for oxygen and a partial positive charge for silicon. In this molecular structure, the center of charges coincide, but under pressure, in this case, when the quartz is struck by the hammer inside the lighter, the force applied to the molecules separates the center of charge into a positive and negative center of charge, resulting in polarization.
When this occurs, one face of the crystal will have a positive charge, and the other face will have a negative charge, which results in a voltage. And when we attach wires and leave a little gap, we can briefly generate a spark, which will ignite the fuel. Of course, we'll find out how well the FireBlaze actually works with no gas in it.
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Okay, let's see what else FireBlaze has been up to on the web. I received tips pointing to two websites. buyfireblaze.com and fireblaze.co. Both appear to be selling the same product with the same name, but with different logos.
Let's dive into buyfireblaze.com first. The first thing I noticed is this live for 24 hours sale. Of course, this is (beep) because I checked it two months later, it's still up. Same 50% discount. What a surprise. The stock counter is also fake because loading the page in a normal window versus a private window will show different results. This is a little trick you can use to identify fake countdown timers and stock counters on websites.
It's a trick I've used in past investigations too. Websites use cookies and other session-based trackers to calculate the counter or timers display, but the private or incognito window loads a new browsing session, meaning all cookies and trackers, which were used in the non-private session, are isolated from the private session and they will not be loaded, resulting in a timer change. These guys are just making up numbers to fool you into buying something. Don't fall for it. Then the website claims this product was seen on ABC, DailyMail, LADbible, Insider, and Forbes. Just like with the video ad, FireBlaze is using these big names to try and legitimize the product.
However, every time I Googled FireBlaze with any of these media outlets, I cannot find any stories about this product. For fun, I emailed all of these outlets asking if this was legit and I haven't heard back. But the replies might not be necessary because if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the webpage, there's this footer and it says, "The content of this advertorial landing page "is created by us and has not been reviewed, approved, "or otherwise endorsed "by any entity mentioned within the post." Dude, why? They're just straight up lying about these endorsements.
At least they're admitting it. So I guess that's a little bit better. Next, on the website, I see this text, which claims FireBlaze is a dual-arc lighter. This feature was never mentioned in the video ad, but I guess technically the FireBlaze could be a dual-arc lighter. Those are a real thing. But next to this dual-arc text, we see a photo that once again shows what appears to be a refilling valve for butane.
I don't know, the FireBlaze could have both. It could have a dual-arc lighter and a butane lighter built in like the one I have. It has both of those features. Yeah, I'm giving FireBlaze way too much credit, aren't I? Then at the bottom of the page, we get to my favorite part, the FAQ. The FAQ confirms the flame is seven inches long and their team is U.S.-based and they ship out of Ohio,
but they don't believe in sending cheap material from China and letting you wait weeks for your order. That sounds like a good selling point. I don't know how true it is, but that's another thing we can test when we order it. But before I place the order, let's take a look at the second website, fireblaze.co. This website mentions a lot of the same claims, reinforcing the specs we can test like the 1800 degrees, seven-inch flame and military-grade materials.
The product looks identical to the FireBlaze on the other website, but oddly enough, this site is selling it for $10 more with a 30 day guarantee instead of 90. If you're looking for the better deal, go to buyfireblaze.com. And here's the last thing that caught my attention. This website directly mentions the refill valve on the bottom instead of trying to hide it, and it's labeled as inflation port. And this further contradicts all of the other claims that say this is a fully electric lighter, which doesn't need gas.
But hey, I like to play fair, I like to look at the positive side of things. I'm gonna give the product a fair shot at proving it's worth. Let's see if the claims are true. So you know what I did next, right? I went ahead and bought two. You know, just in case I break one.
I decided to purchase from buyfireblaze.com because that was the first website I found. And wow, it's actually more expensive than the Amazon listing that they said doesn't exist. I selected my quantity, put in my info, and what a surprise, a post-transaction upsell.
Actually, I only got hit with two this time, which is a lot better than some of the other websites I've investigated. All right, the order is confirmed. Now we wait. (clock ticking) Okay, so they arrived in about 10 days. That part wasn't too bad, but then something happened that I don't think I've ever encountered in a scam buster investigation before.
It was a little frustrating and a little weird. So while I was waiting for my order, one of the layer guards gave me a slip. You know, one of those USPS slips that says you missed a package, except this time, it didn't say I missed anything. It said I had postage due. And I thought, "Okay, that's kind of ridiculous "that I paid 8.99 for shipping on the website," which, by the way, they do not tell you about until the transaction is complete.
They don't tell you the shipping cost upfront, kind of fishy. But anyway, they charged me for the shipping on the website, but I still had $9 of postage due. I thought that was kind of weird. But when I arrive at the post office, I find out that FireBlaze didn't even use real postage in the first place. They used fraudulent postage, meaning they just pocketed my shipping payment and slapped a fake label on the box.
Pretty shady. I didn't wanna cause a fuss 'cause I just my freaking torches. So I paid the nine bucks and I was on my way, but just to be safe, I decided to check my bank statements and I'm glad I did. Turns out on the day I placed my order, FireBlaze charged me on my card an additional $19.99 for no apparent reason. So I emailed them about that using my VTech Companion as seen on episode 17.
[Announcer] As seen on episode 17! (bright music) Well, hello, oh, hey, they replied. Let's take a look. Okay, they said the $19.99 was for a VIP Club with a Mystery Box.
Okay, hold up a second. I remember seeing a VIP Club thing during the post-transaction upsells, but unless I was hypnotized or something, I wouldn't have clicked that Buy button on purpose. So, I don't know, maybe I clicked on it by accident. Either way, I did not get a receipt for that transaction.
The additional $19.99 wasn't on the original receipt, and it wasn't in a separate receipt. So the fact that they didn't even disclose the charge to me with a receipt is pretty fishy. To their credit, when I asked them to remove the charge, they agreed and the amount was credited to my card, but I wish the problem stopped there. About two weeks after I received my FireBlazes, I started getting erroneous charges from Dailygadg.
Thankfully, my card automatically blocked those transactions, but I wanna see what they have to say. I mean, after all, they have a phone number in the vendor name, so let's give them a call. (bright hold music) - [Female Voice] No support agents are currently available to take your call. Please call back later. (three beeps) - All right, I guess we're not gonna get anywhere with that.
Full disclosure, I can't confirm that these Dailygadg charges are related to FireBlaze, but given the timing and the similar shadiness of the situation, I would say it's likely, but I can't confirm that 100%. So yes, the order process started pretty smooth, but it quickly turned into one of the worst I've ever seen. It was a cluster fudge.
I'm a believer in second chances though. So I ordered a third FireBlaze and it actually shipped without fraudulent postage and it had tracking this time. My last order didn't have tracking and there were no additional erroneous charges. So good job, FireBlaze, whatever you did, it seems like you fixed it, hopefully.
Now that the products are here, let's take a look. FireBlaze comes in a generic box, which doesn't mention the brand name anywhere. Instead it just says LIGHTER SMOKING SET. And on the back it says, Made in China.
(record scratch) Wait, hold on. Stop, stop for a second. I thought you said you shipped from Ohio and you didn't believe in using cheap materials from China? So just the box is made in China, I see. Well, thank you for clarifying that. Look, I don't care if your product is made in China. My iPhone is made in China and I like it.
Just don't lie about it. Above the Made in China text, it shows instructions on how to refill with butane gas. What? No, no, stop, stop. Again, that's gotta be a typo because clearly in the ad, you said it uses ion pulse technology and it doesn't need butane.
Before we open the box, I just have to point out one other thing I got in the shipment. This was in the shipping package. I mean, what the heck even is this? Can anybody on God's green Earth explain what this is? Is this one of those ear cleaning kits I've seen on the internet? I'm no earologist, so I'm just gonna leave this stuff over here, yeah. Oh, was that the bonus gift? Was that the Mystery Box VIP gift? What a great way to spend $20. Anyway, inside the FireBlaze box, we have this enclosed instruction book. It's mostly in Chinese, so I can't read it, sorry, but hey, it is classic fashionable.
So now we get to this military-grade FireBlaze lighter. (music) (finger tapping) Yeah, definitely, definitely feels military-grade. Despite being textured to look like carbon fiber and metal, this lighter's entire enclosure is sadly plastic. How deceiving. And it's already scratching with minimal use. However, the top piece surrounding the nozzle is made of a stronger material for heat resistance, likely ceramic.
On the bottom, we see our refill valve, which we will use in a moment, but the box labels it as an air hole. We also have a lock switch, the ignition switch, and a slider for adjusting the flame. On the inside, we see the mechanisms for the lock and the ignition switch. We also see where the carbon fiber pattern ends with this smear on the inner plastic. So this pattern is likely applied with a hydro dipping process. Now, for being a no gas product, I'm surprised that the biggest component inside this thing is the butane tank.
And no matter how hard you look, there's no battery or USB port or charging circuitry anywhere. The only electrical component is this wire, which if my hypothesis is correct, is most likely connected to the piezoelectric crystal we talked about earlier. This is so it can carry the electric charge up to the nozzle where it reacts with the fuel. There is nothing indicating that this is a fully electric, no gas lighter, but hey, looks can be deceiving, you know, like fake carbon fiber. So let's test it out and give it a fair shot.
Ready? Here we go. (laser blast) (alarm blaring) That's gonna come up in the next HOA meeting. (lounge music) So let's test it out. Here we go. (lighter clicking) Hmm, it does nothing. Hopefully that didn't surprise you. I do see a tiny spark in here, so hypothesis confirmed.
There is a piezoelectric crystal being used in here to create the spark, which will ignite with the fuel. So FireBlaze is a complete scam, and I think we proved that with aplomb, aplomb, aplomb, that's a fun word. But let's try this from another angle. Let's actually fill it properly with butane and test it like a normal lighter and Delicious Damian is gonna help out when we come back.
Hey everyone, make sure to subscribe and stay tuned for upcoming episodes. I'm looking at doing an episode about the funky tooth-shaped Molar Mac and the Analogue Pocket, so stick around. All right, let's set some stuff on fire and see if we can truly get a seven-inch flame at 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.
And remember, when burning stuff for fun, write down your observations because now it's technically science, I think. If we look at our scorecard here, we already know the no gas claim is bogus and the plasma claims are very unlikely. But what about these other tests? Right off the bat, the flame felt underwhelming, especially after watching the bigger flames in the ads. - [Ken] However, even though it's hard to see in most lighting conditions, the flame is in fact seven inches long. So the claim is correct, but I also experienced some different results, which made the flame bigger.
In my tests, there were some instances where the flame burst higher suddenly, but I wasn't sure if that was normal. So I turned off the lighter, and there were some times where I tried it again, now I'm a little more prepared. And yeah, it would burst, but then the flame would just go away completely.
I did let it set. I tried all of the normal rules, you know, to let the butane settle and all that, but maybe some air kept getting in there. Maybe the pressure kept getting thrown off, I'm not sure. I should also mention when I closed the valve, the flame performed consistently.
There was never a burst or any issues. However, now we're using a smaller flame. Now let's test out some miscellaneous things.
I tried burning similar objects that were used in the ad, and overall the results were similar. And heck, it's just fun to burn stuff. - [Ken] That smells good. - And I know Peeps weren't in the ad, but I just wanted to burn some Peeps. Listen to them bubble. Oh, listen to 'em bubble.
- [Damian] The one at the end's just watching. He's just like looking right at 'em. - [Ken] Don't worry, we'll get you, too.
- [Damian] Oh, (beep). - [Damian] Those poor guys. - [Ken] Oh, (beep).
- Even with the cold weather and some wind, the flame was not affected even when we were using it at an angle. When Damian used a more traditional lighter, he was having some issues. So for those types of tests, FireBlaze appears to work okay, but that's only if you avoid the magical science and actually use gas. And now for the final test, is Sonic the Hedgehog fireproof? (dramatic music) No, are you kidding me? I wouldn't do that.
Now for the real final test, temperature. To measure the flame temperature, I'm using a THS-192 Thermometer from Auber Instruments combined with a WRNK-191 10-inch Inconel probe, which is rated for up to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. The safety instructions say, "Do not keep lighter lit "for more than 10 seconds."
So we will cut the test off at 10 seconds. And our temperature was about 1089 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay, not terrible. That's honestly probably fine for most applications. But for fun, we decided to ignore the safety instructions and go to 15 seconds. And our temperature landed at 1,283 degrees Fahrenheit.
So I'm gonna say, eh, close enough. Ultimately, I think FireBlaze is a piece of garbage. And yeah, some of the claims were true or close enough at least, but none of that applies if you follow the ads and don't use gas. This thing is completely a scam. Do not buy it.
I was gonna throw it, but I probably shouldn't. There's gas in this thing. Anyway, I hope you had fun today. I know, I sure did. If you want to have some more fun, check out some more episodes and stay tuned because I can't wait to show you what I've got cooking for the future.
Until then, catch the crazy and pass it on. (bright music) All right, that's a wrap, everyone. Good job. (scary, droning music) Yeah, feel pretty good. Do you feel good?
- [Ken to Himself] Yeah, I feel great. - You feel good? That's good. No, I know. I feel great. I feel great. Life is good, life is good. (muffled white noise getting louder)
2025-03-21 23:41
