🪖 Sgt. Pepper's Fireworks 🎆 My Step-Uncle's Shop In Indiana 🧨
From Elvis Presley to Taco Tuesday and zombies, my step-uncle Eric's fireworks shop has just about any firework you can imagine in any theme.
Eric's Passion For Explosions 🧨
This small unassuming shop in southern Indiana wouldn't appear to be overloaded with fireworks, but step inside and you will be amazed. My step-uncle on my stepdad's side of the family owns this shop, and his name is not Sergeant Pepper, it's Eric, but the name sure gives the shop a lot of character.
As you might've noticed in the thumbnail, there are even Elvis Presley themed fireworks, proof China possibly knows American customers better than they know themselves. Can you find a bucket KFC WFC Chicken in the photo above? Just another example of how fireworks are tailored to cultural trends to increase sales.
Not Just Fireworks 👕
If you want a little fashion with your fireworks, this is the place for you fashionistas to make an explosive statement with a variety of Sgt. Pepper's t-shirts, all printed in-house. You can see a few shirts hanging on the wall on the left side of the above photo. There are many more shirts in other places, and because Eric is a shirt-o-phile, I brought him a few Cambodian t-shirts and he gifted me with a mound of Sgt. Pepper's shirts to clothe my family and I.
There are also many odds and ends in the shop, so if you're not firework obsessed you can can still enjoy your time here. Unfortunately I wasn't going to be in Indiana long enough to enjoy some fireworks, so I didn't purchase anything, but instead I had a lot of fun taking pictures of the artwork adorning each different style of fireworks package.
Are These CBD Fireworks 🚬
Smoke bombs are something I enjoyed playing with as a kid, at least when I both had enough money to buy some and there were some to be found. Sgt. Pepper's has a variety of smoke bombs, but what caught my eye were some display stands that looked like something from a cannabis dispensary. China is obviously very clued into American pop culture, so enjoy your smoke bomb CBD spliffs 🤣.
The Artwork Is Captivating 👨🎨
Perhaps it's because I've been high in the remote Cardamom Moutains now for over a year, but I was simply mesmerized by all the packaging, logos, and signage in the USA. There aren't many packaged goods around here, and even then we have to drive 30km to shop for them, and it's only stuff like skin whitening creams and fake Pringles chips, not nearly as exciting as Taco Tuesday fireworks 😁.
I dare say a fireworks store is a museum of modern American culture in a sense. If I were a foreigner in my own country and had only 5 minutes to experience the essence of America, a demolition derby, trip to a fireworks store, or a visit to Wal-Mart would rank high on the list. Just look at the grenade thing above on the right, appropriately titled Bad Ass Neon.
Great Balls Of Fire 🔥
"Goodness gracious, great balls of fire.."
This is a line from an old Jerry Lee Lewis song, and I find many fireworks target a male buyer aged 50+, mostly because these are the people who have the most disposable income to buy such things. Sidenote - Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old first cousin when she was aged 13 and he was 22, and this more or less killed his career. Despite being a creep he was a prodigy on the piano.
Freedom By The Pallet 👷
There is the one and only Sgt. Pepper himself (aka Eric), piloting the Toyota forklift. A delivery arrived while I was visiting, so it was a great opportunity to get some action shots and see some new merch roll off the back of the truck.
The above box really made me laugh because it read "Proud to be an American," but of course it's direct from China because they pretty much run the global fireworks industry these days.
I was surprised to see some fake beer bottle packaging, but I didn't read the box to see the description of how they work or what kind of explosive fun they emit.
Every time I visit my old hometown I stop by to see Eric at his shop. There aren't many good conversationalists in this part of the USA, and even less people truly curious about my life overseas. We always have good conversations, and I'm interested in pretty much anything, so I really enjoy learning more about fireworks, silk screening and printing shirts, and pretty much any new hobbies or interests he gets into.
At the back of the lot I saw an old box truck that I remember from my highschool days. It's got nice branding on it, and of course the address and name of my town, Princeton. At the moment the truck has a long list of mechanical issues, so it's more of a billboard than a box truck. Well, that about sums it up for this adventure. In case you didn't already know, I am back in Cambodia now, but there are still a couple of American adventures left to share before I begin posting somewhat close to real-time life events. Until next time....
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Very good job in getting all the details of each china made merican proud product. As you said, you found more Merica than the American here.
I bet the truck wasn't that bad of a deal if Sgt Peppers set his mind to restore it. Worst it gets, shove a Chevy 350 small block into it, it will be up and running again. I guess, it's really not much of a difference having a mobile fireworks sales truck running around. Considering a big portion of the customers are online. But of course, it will be useful to have that truck to move heavy artillery around when Sgt Pepper's get a government contract to blow some serious sky during July 4
Haha, yes, the CCCP knows us better than we know ourselves, and perhaps they could send a Chinese clone small block Chevy along with the next shipment of fireworks. Well, strange but my uncle did and still does have a rare license to build, sell, and/or detonate large explosions and fireworks. He still occasionally does contracts to put on fireworks displays for 4th of July city events, private things, and strangely Halloween is his second biggest time of year for fireworks.
Different kind of fireworks is the best! Though they have to be very careful with fire, I think no one will dare to play fire in there, no? Anyways thats really a lot of choices in there. I never tried using a fireworks even on new years, I'm just afraid, that is why.
Yeah, no smoking inside that store, and I don't think any incidents have ever occurred in the past. You have to be crazy about safety when you do this stuff, and my uncle always takes great care when working with and around them. For me though, I don't think I could ever feel relaxed around that many flammable and combustible things.
That place was awesome . I can see there was a lot variety of firework . I wonder how much the most expensive firework per "kaboomm"
I don't know if there is anything that costs thousands, but there are many individual fireworks there that cost several hundred dollars of dollars for about two minutes worth of excitement. I prefer to watch fireworks that someone else bought, those are the most fun 🤣
Same here . I prefer to enjoy the firework than burning dollar on it. :). Thanks to good people who always giving an happiness through firework to us. !LUV :).
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I'll take 20 of 'em.
I remember as a kid that we were, without a parent or adult present, able to purchase loads of these things. Did we use them irresponsibly? Absolutely. Were we given a safety briefing about them? Absolutely not. Did we blow ourselves up? Well, we got burned a little bit here and there but that was part of the fun.
I think my favorite fireworks of all time were simply bottle rockets and black cat firecrackers. It used to be so much fun seeing what we could destroy with black cats and as it turns out you can destroy a lot of things.
One of the most fun we had with Black Cats was to stick a plastic detergent lid on top of a lit one and see how far it would fly up in the air. Let me tell you, it would fly VERY far.
While the rules probably vary from state to state these days I have heard that some of the states have restricted firework sales to the point where all of the fun stuff is gone now.
Roman Candle wars was probably the best, even better than snowball, bottle rocket, or even bb gun fights. I charged full throttle at way too many friends while wielding one of those things and screaming like a maniac. My uncle used to make and sell his own, and we could get things like 1/4th sticks of dynamite that you can strike on a matchbox, definitely taped hundreds of those together.
He even had cannon shells, basically just bocce balls of black powder meant to shoot up in the air from a tube and provide the boom you hear when you see those massive fireworks in the upper atmosphere. Well, if you just lay one of those balls on the ground instead of putting it in the tube, you basically have a landmine that you have seconds to escape from. Definitely put those in mailboxes with friends and a few of us got in legal trouble.
yeah there was plenty of destruction of property on my part as well. It's just part of growing up. It was just the kind of mischief that kids got into back then and nobody got hurt. I do kind of feel bad about some of it now that I am older and actually have or have had my own property though.
The only near horrible injury I suffered at the hands of fireworks was holding a coffee can with maybe a hundred small bottle rockets lit at once over my head. As it turns out those fuses drip something seriously hot on you and it burned the crap out of my head and arms. I dropped the can and those things just flew everywhere.
I'd like to think any negative karma from those days has already caught up with me and been paid for in full.
yeah. I am with you on that one. I think I am putting more good than bad into the world these days so it all balances out.