Show features segment shot at Phantom

YOUNGSTOWN — The Discovery Channel’s “How It’s Made” will air a segment featuring Phantom Fireworks’ Diamond Sparkler Manufacturing Co. at 9 p.m. Friday.

The segment, which was filmed in September 2007 by Productions MAJ of Canada, will show a behind-the-scenes look at the Diamond Sparkler production process in Youngstown. Viewers will see a step-by-step account of how sparklers are made from bare steel wire.

Production MAJ’s documentary approach does not use any on-camera hosts, narrators or company spokesmen. This allows for off-camera narration to be added in several languages for broadcast in various countries, such as France, Hungary, Italy, Norway and Poland.

The B.J. Alan Co., parent company to Phantom Fireworks, established the Diamond Sparkler in 1985 after it acquired the assets of a sparkler manufacturing facility that was originally founded in Chicago by the Callen family. Diamond Sparkler is the last continuously producing sparkler manufacturing facility in the United States.

“It is amazing that something as American as sparklers, with its association with the 4th of July, is now made in the United States by only one producing facility,” said Bruce J. Zoldan, president of Phantom. “If you don’t use Diamond Sparklers, you are celebrating America’s Independence with a foreign product.”

During Diamond’s peak manufacturing season, its production capabilities reach about 800,000 sparklers per day. Diamond Sparklers are distributed through the Phantom Fireworks chain of retail consumer fireworks showrooms, as well as such large retail chains as Dollar Tree, Giant Eagle, Kmart and Sheetz.