SCOTTSDALE — Taser International's newest weapons for the public will come in leopard print and fit in a holster with an embedded MP3 player, the stun gun maker said Monday.
Taser spokesman Peter Holran said the Scottsdale-based company wanted to make it easy for people to integrate its C2 "personal protector" stun guns into their lives.
"If people buy the C2 Taser and leave it in a drawer or under a shelf, it does them no good when they need it," Holran said.
The Taser C2, which shoots two electrically charged darts with the same shocking power as the police version, was launched last year. It already came in four colors — silver, black, blue and pink.
The company announced Monday that it would also make the guns available in leopard print, "fashion" pink, and "red-hot" red.
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"Women want whatever they're carrying — from a lipstick case to their eyeglass case to their Taser — to look nice and be something they won't mind having fall out of their purse," Holran said.
The Taser MPH (Music Player Holster) will hold 1 gigabyte of music, enough to allow a wearer to listen to a variety of songs while carrying a stun gun on a hip.
Holran said the company didn't do any extensive market testing to see what customers wanted. The new products are largely a result of the manufacturer's responding to customer suggestions, he said.
Taser, which was founded in 1993, originally sought a consumer market for its stun guns but has sold them primarily to law enforcement agencies.
Another of Taser's shocking product ideas — an electrically charged steering-wheel locking bar called the Auto Taser — was rolled out to industry plaudits in 1998 but failed in the marketplace and was discontinued 18 months later.