Turner Broadcasting is apologizing today after a viral street marketing campaign sent Boston to its highest level of alert.
The city shut down major bridges and roads after suspicious packages were found under a bridge and scattered throughout the city, each one triggering an emergency response from a different agency--police, federal agents, and the US Coast guard. Bomb squads were deployed and the areas were cordoned off.
Late Wednesday, Turner Broadcasting released a statement explaining the mysterious packages were part of a street marketing campaign for the Adult Swim cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The icons had been in place in 10 major US cities for weeks.
"The 'packages' in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger," Turner Broadcasting said in statement. "We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger."
The city of Boston is not laughing.
"This has taken a significant toll on our resources," Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said of the faux crisis.
Comments (45)
This has to be the stupidest post-911 story I have heard yet! I don't know who's more stupid: Boston authorities for their paranoid blunder or TBS for pulling this stunt. The cartoon isn't even that good.
When I first saw the what the "bombs" looked like I seriously fell over laughing. What kind of moron mistakes a Lite Brite-Look alike for a bomb? I know a lot of people aren't exactly familiar with ATHF and maybe a bridge wasn't exactly the best place to put one. But honestly... Who in their right mind would look at that and think it was a BOMB?! The saddest part is that these things were around for weeks and nobody noticed them. This incident really does show just how stupid some people are... Kinda sad when you think about it.
1-31-07 Never Forget
Hey Boston - Somebody set you up the bomb!
OK, I am not saying that all of Boston are ***s, but some of you need to convince your neighbors to get a CAT scan...
P.S. ATHF raped boston.
face it the goverment over reacted. how they could get that mistaken for a bomb is just dumb. i don't like the show but tbh ir not they fault if people over reacted a thought it was a bomb (even thought it looks nothing like a a bomb)
I couldn't stop laughing.
i'd stand next to it if i thought it was a bomb, so then i could tell people "yeah ive stood next to a live bomb before" then i'd probably go to frozen custard
Wow. For lack of a better word, Boston is ***ed.
RIP: MA's sense of humor.
and me. I died for 2 minutes from laughing so hard.
GET ME OUT OF MASSACHUSETTS! THE PARANOID PEOPLE ARE SCARING ME!!!
^_^
They had em up here in NY too, but they were in the city. I wish I could've seen em....
I
I made a picture like that on my Lite-Brite and nothing happened! Was there supposed to be some kind of nuclear reaction?! Was Topeka supposed to be blown off the map? Da***! I guess I'll have to try making a dinosaur! Maybe that will send Topeka into a HIGHEST LEVEL OF ALERT EVER ATTAINED!
this was a real panic crisis and if you read the paper and laugh about this I hope you get blown up by a non threatning object
This is so laughable. I've read other stories about the same thing, and the officals come off as silly and not too bright at all. And the only thing that has been Blown up here is the Media circus around it. How come only one city found this to be a problem? and now they are trying to cover themselves by saying it's all Turner broadcastings fault...for what? your the ones who didn't check your sources, didn't play it cool and freaked out at a "electric device". I understand wanting to be safe but these officals bought a city to a hault because they didn't check their sources and assumed that it was a terror plot. If I assumed everything that lit up is a terror plot I would be homebound. They wanted it to be real, they wanted to say "Oh look we caught the nasty terrorist, praise us." But when that didn't happen it makes them look exactly like it should they jumped the gun to make themselves look good. and by charging Turner with these charges they hope to rebuild some of their chopped up pride.moreless
i origanly thought that this was dumb i didn't think to realise that it was brilant i dont think they will be fired at all they might be premoted to head of alteritve advertiseing ( wether or not it ends them in jail and tbs and the advertising companie with a huge fine atleast inuff to cover the 1/2 mill spent in blowing up a lite brte
wait a minit i want to give cooto's to the boston pd first police department in the world to spend $500,000 blowing up a lite brite
how lame ! lol. I can't believe they thought it was something like that.
Congrats! The terrorist have won! I thought the whole point of the post 9/11 era was to get over things like this. Now we have the Mayor of Boston saying you can't do this in the post 9/11 era. It's all been blown out of proportion and it proves 1)We can't take a joke anymore and 2)The terrorist have won because they have us scared of our own shadows.
Get over it! Drop the charges, move on! Nothing to see here anyway.
Stupid kids and at the press conference they just wanted to talk about thei rhair.
the show sucks and so does their idea of advertising .
GENIUS PURE GENIUS. This publicity stunt got the ATHF more pub then any advertising campaign could have. The Boston police response only shows how stupid people really are. And to the clown that says the show should get cancelled? try again. It's huge on Adult Swim and isn't going anywhere.
Long live the Mooninites! haha
ATHF sucks anyway,this is completely stupid for them to put these out.They deserve to get cancelled,the show sucks major ballsacks anyway
I agree with Scopeless. When i read this, I couldn't stop laughing. What kind of idiot sees a bunch of light brights and automatically assumes its a bomb. Meanwhile, there are terrorists getting away with real *** while they're spending 1/2 a mil on clearing out old/crappy 80's toys. The fact that they were "preventing the terrorist attack" should have cued them into the fact that it was no terrorist attack at all.
I wonder if the genius behind this marketing campain will be fired or will get a promotion. Remeber "any publicity is good plublicty as long as they spell your name right". AND btw why didnt any of the other cites "Overreact" to these obvious bombs?
Yeah, this was all over CNN last night: which sure was great advertising for ATHF.
Why would they start a bomb scare. I guess they probably started one for the 1 commercial about the bank cause they did the same thing in that.
Boston may not be laughing, but I sure as heck am! lololol
The terrorists are tricky. Hiding bombs in lite brite. It's genius.
This marketing campaign was done in 9 cities, it seems only one had any kind of problem with it, let alone even noticed it. This was a genius idea and anyone who could even think these were bombs needs to stop watching so much tv and get in a little better tune with reality. They were lightbrights with cartoon characters on them. Now mistake me if I'm wrong but if you wanted to set off a bomb wouldn't you hide it somewhere away from notice, not light it up and hang it from a tree? 5 seconds of logical thought and not overblown reacting would have saved an entire city some embarrassment. Oh, and cudos to the marketing company that came up with this. Number one story in the nation. Can you say "Mission Accomplished"?moreless
Idiocy at work. What the hell did TBS expect?
Ok am I the only one who's thinking WTF!? 1). Not everyone knows ATHF...
2). These items are placed in random spots...
3). Who's going to know it's for promotional purposes if it's just sitting somewhere???
This screams WTF...
This is hilarious!! Right now, Ignignokt and Urr are up there right now spraying "MOON RULZ!!" across the Sea of Tranquility. They have proven that our primitive intellects are so inferior to theirs, that we thought a Lite Brite picture was a bomb. How awesome is that? And flipping the bird, no less! Our primetime media has been showing loops of media of a Mooninite flipping us the bird! Priceless. America needs to lighten up. Maybe this will show us that the terrorists have indeed won. We have become a nation of pansies frightened of our own shadow. It's a shame someone is going to get fired for this.
Somebody at TBS is gonna be embarrassed.......
maybe they over reacted to that...
dient tbs tell any one this would have saved them some truble
Is it just me or is this essentially lite-brite?
if TBS did that here in colorado I Bet the same thing would happen too.
hahaha That's really really funny.
We had a similar (though much smaller scale) thing happen at the centre i work- they evacuated the whole centre for something like 7 hours only to find out that the 'bomb' was a hand-held lamp. Haha. But i guess it's better safe than sorry! Unless you're both...
I lol'd
reminds me of an april fools some people did last year, they made mario ? boxes and left them lying around.
Oh my God. Are you serious? "Terrorist hoax"? How on God's green earth can you call this a hoax if nobody ever made a threat in the first place? Are people in Boston really this dumb? It's a giant picture of Err made out of <i>lights</i>. What do you think turns them on, the spirit of Paul Revere? How about that <i>tiny little box</i> attached to the bottom, geniuses? I can just picture some idiot on the subway checking up on the Red Sox and Patriots, looking at the sign and screaming "Oh geez, look out, it's a baaamb!" The mayor is just as ***ed for wanting to throw a marketing team in jail because he oversees a city of morons, and doesn't want to admit it.
awesome!
What did they look like?
I watch TBS everyday...
TBS will proberly do anything for ratings. TBS is one of the most boring cable channels.
i think its sort of funny. I saw on the news there was no packages just strange drawings.
lol that is kinda funny.