“To the children, it was not a deadly weapon, but more a dynamic and giggle-inducing obstacle,” their father Hashimoto, a 39-year-old animation worker from Prince Edward Island, told South West News Service. “They had a friend over to play on the patio, and we decided to let them have some supervised play with this electric leaf blower.”

Just chill out: The do-it-yourself device might look scary, but the flame is just a burst of silk fabric that looks like flames.

What was Hashimoto thinking? He and his wife, Mandy Richardville, who is 41, want to "get kids to be creative."

“So far, it’s paid off!” he said.

The only reason Hashimoto isn’t catching heat for endangering his two tots is because his flamethrower only expels strips of silk colored to look like realistic fire.

“We decided to see how the lightweight fabric might play with the blower, so Sophia grabbed a large rubber band and some tape, and we affixed it to the nozzle,” Hashimoto said. “The result was even more spectacular than we imagined — large billowing waves looked remarkably like flames — and so the device immediately was dubbed ‘the flame thrower.’ “

Now, the kids play games like “flame tag” or jump rope over the embers — they even reenact scenes similar to the Nickelodeon show “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”

“The children all took turns chasing each other in a game of ‘Flame Tag.’ We also played a jump-rope-over-the-flames game, and the children acted out a ‘fire bending’ play,” Hashimoto said.

Even before the landscaping faux torch came to be, Hashimoto put his leaf blower to good use with the kids, the playfully pyro patriarch added.

“We hovered ping-pong balls, did slow-motion videos of our hair blowing in the wind, tried inflating a fitted sheet like a big marshmallow, and finally the flame thrower . . . When you’re a kid, play time is epic! You can imagine larger-than-life scenarios.”

Hashimoto said that this kind of creativity will go a long way in helping kids grow up. He said that if a dad is creative, he will have the best playdates in the neighborhood and be a shoe-in for dad of the year.

“I believe that most children can turn this kind of imagination into being good at improvising, and dealing with challenges,” he said. “We definitely want to encourage imaginative play, creative problem solving and inventing a fun new game out of what’s lying around.”