Elon Musk’s the Boring Company recently went viral selling a flamethrower for $500. This was exciting news — as a lifelong pyro (I have channeled my pyromania into making soy candles and baking, because, you know, adulthood), an affordable flamethrower is something I’ve always kept an eye out for. And $500 is groundbreaking pricing.

When I saw the actual ad, I was disappointed. Not only is the Boring Co “flamethrower” (BCF) not an actual flamethrower, it is about 400% more expensive than it should be.

See, the BCF is actually a mundane gardening torch (useful for clearing stubborn weeds without bending your back) inside a toy gun, sold as a “flamethrower”. While it looks like Boring Co invested in some custom injection molds for the BCF, it’s almost certainly the same OEM as the CSI S.T.A.R. XR-5 FG-1508 Advanced Bottle Rifle toy. And the “flamethrower” part of the BCF can be purchased on Amazon for $40–60 by searching for “gardening torch”.

Let’s take a step back: what is a flamethrower? How is it different than a torch, and why does it matter?

Fundamentally a flamethrower has to, well, throw flame. It does this by

1. igniting a fuel and
2. shooting the burning fuel with an inert propellant gas such as carbon dioxide or nitrogen

In contrast, a torch only lights fuel and can only effectively burn whatever is immediately near it, like a pesky weed.

A true flamethrower such as the excellent X15 has two tanks: a fuel and a propellant tank. The BCF has a tiny fuel tank (good for a few seconds of fire), and no propellant tank. Effectively, it’s a big lighter.

In fact, torches are so common that we realized we had a dusty one in the Root Ventures office we once used to light a pizza oven and kill some weeds. I’ve mapped the main parts of this torch to the BCF.

So what should you do if you want a flamethrower? If you want an actual flamethrower, the X15 is your best bet. It can use commercially available CO2 as a propellant. If you want a BCF? Buy a gardening torch and have a ton of cash left over.