Talk about "guerrilla marketing." By now, you’ve probably already heard about the arrest of Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, two admen who were hired by Turner Broadcasting to publicize the Cartoon Network show Aqua Teen Hunger Force and are now sitting in a jail cell for disorderly conduct and placing a hoax device. The two brainiacs decided that, despite the fact you can’t even carry a full tube of toothpaste onto a domestic plane flight, it would be funny to put up black boxes with magnetic lights featuring the show’s bird-flipping Mooninites around the city of Boston. But the stunt caused a panic and scared the bejesus out of a lot ofpeople—not to mention strangling the city’s traffic flow for a while asbomb squads were called in. Thanks to YouTube, you can see the marketers caught in action in the clip below.
The two pseudo-saboteurs are scheduled to appear in court this morning for arraignment. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like a simple mea culpa is going to clear the men, seeing as the city’s mayor, Thomas M. Menino, is seriously steamed. On the other hand, according to a statement from Turner Broadcasting, similar Mooninite boxes went on display in other cities without incident. What sort of punishment, if any, do you think these guys deserve? Are they going to be the fall guys for Turner or for Interference, Inc., the actual marketing company behind the ATHF Attack?
UPDATE: For those interested in owning a piece of this scandal, anenterprising young soul has put an LED of a Mooninite hoax box takenoff Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue and put it up for sale on eBay. Bidsare already up to $5,001 with six days left to go.
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Ridiculous. The only reason they’ll prosecute is because Mumbles and the rest of the top brass are embarassed that they overreacted to a lite brite guy flipping the bird.
They shouldn’t be punished at all.
I can’t believe he arrested those guys. Of course the mayor’s steamed. He was made to look like a Grade A Fool, shutting down the city over Lite-Brite! Rather than admit he’s taken Bush’s fearmongering to heart and cost the city thousands, he needs to blame someone else. Ignoring the fact that these were up in much bigger target cities (Like LA, or NYC) for weeks without incident.
I hope this is the last straw against him and he gets turned out of office.
Is it wrong, I thought it was kinda of funny. No punishment, maybe next time let the police know you’re doing it. Seems kinda of harmless. But WOW did they score publicity for the film!
No punishment. Most people who haven’t bought duct tape to seal off their windows at home would have enough common sense to know there was nothing dangerous about that. The Fox News coverage of it trying to make it look like a terrorist attack was more entertaining to me than Aqua Teen has even been.
These guys are idiots and they deserve to be punished. Maybe if someone had ever watched this cartoon they would have recognized the character. They put the signs on bridges, major roadways, under the subway and at a hospital. At night, anyone can tell that they are harmless. But during the day, it looks like an electronic box with a battery pack and wires. What do you expect the police to do when they get reports of 9 identical, strange looking electronic boxes under major parts of the city? These guys will laugh themselves all the way to jail.
The city of Boston was completely out of step with the rest of the cities where this happened. Total overreaction. Part of their anger stems from their embarrassing themselves. Pathetic.
I can’t believe that the Boston Police overreacted to a bunch of Light Brite pictures giving the finger. Next from Turner’s marketing department: Aqua Teen Hunger Force does Spiral Graph.
Their lawyer had a valid point when he said that a VCR could be sitting on the ground with exposed wires and nobody would think anything of it. No punishment for these guys; the city of Boston is just embarassed.
PS: Aqua Teen stinks.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so redunk. We all need to take a look within ourselves and calm the heck down. The state of hysteria this administration and the media has put us in is to the point of a bad comedy sketch now. CARTOON CHARACTERS, PEOPLE!
In hindsight, it wasn’t the wisest thing to place those boxes around the city. But come on! Just a quick examination of the devices would indicate that they were harmless. The city of Boston totally over reacted. Since there was no intent to scare anyone, I can’t even call it a hoax. I seriously doubt any charges would or should stick.
But this is greatly symbolic of the lack of common sense in the terror war. As ill advised as the campaign was, the authorities should have figured out the harmlessness of it before it made the news. It took them hours and hours to do so.
You are missing the point. If someone stuck a bunch of old VCRs with wires on them on bridges, the subway and at a hospital I’m sure the police would have treated it the same way. The problem here was that no one recognized the character. Ultimately the city is pissed off for spending millions of dollars shutting down the city for hours and now someone is going to pay.
You can’t even call this a “hoax”. The intention of the campaign was not to create a bomb scare. I feel bad for these two guys facing the wrath of an embarrassed city government.
As a fan of ATHF, I thought it funny that the Mooninites (who mostly spend time trying to break the law and who’ve gotten several of the characters sent to jail) were able to get the whole NETWORK in trouble.
As for the guys, they should get community service. The officials said the city received no advance notice of this, and the guys placed some of these on private property. Turner Broadcasting SHOULD have to repay the city of Boston for the costs to take these down as it inconvenienced an entire city.
As for the town not having a sense of humor, Boston’s Logan airport WAS where what, three of the 9/11 planes departed from? They don’t F around in a town with millions of people and a massive unbderground and under water tunnel highway…
Here’s my question: The boxes had been in New York City; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; San Francisco, California; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for two weeks too. Why did Boston flip out?
You would think the most embarrassing thing Mayor Mumbles would have to endure is having a woman being crushed by a 12-ton slab of concrete. But noooooo… he overreacted to an ad for a dumb cartoon, so now he has to follow through with this nonsense. 10 cities had the same exact campaign, and only stupid Menino treated it like a terrorist attack. What a waste of time and money!
After being released, the two guys had a press conference, but refused to address questions about anything but 1970s hairstyles. It was perfect.
Mole hill meet the mountain.
Give me a break. I guess the terrorists win. Scared now?
yeah – this is all a bit much. no punishment. it was a mistake. but really, what kind of terrorist would put shiny lights on his bombs for all to see??
Stupid and lame. Looks to me like the city is embarrassed and is just trying to save face.
“For those interested in owning a piece of this scandal, an enterprising young soul has put an LED of a Mooninite hoax box”
It’s not a “hoax box.” Sheesh. The LED display was not intended to be seen as a bomb. It was an ad. The hoax charge (a felony) requires intent. At most, the artists broke graffiti laws. They should be fined whatever the law stipulates for that violation. They should not have to pay for the police action. Remember, this is the same mayor that asked Sony to pay for the police force during the PS3 launch. Pathetic. As a Bostonian, I feel embarrassed.
As noted already, these promo items have been in several cities before Boston. No panic, no problems. Who knew Bostonites were such Mary’s? Grow a pair!
That’s a good point someone made about not being able to see the pictures in the daytime. I’m going to go against the general feeling here and say somebody should be getting in trouble over this, for not forewarning the authorities if nothing else, but it shouldn’t be the poor saps who were just making a few bucks hanging some things up.
I really want to see one of the first people who reported this as a potential bomb explain themselves, because I just don’t see how you could think it was anything harmful.
Oh, and Stephanie, it’s Spirograph, and it was the coolest toy ever!
i live in boston. it was a general a$$ache here yesterday.
i think a lot of grief could have been avoided had turner co. just let city officials know this was going on a couple of weeks ago. unfortunately it’s no longer a good idea to wedge anything with wires and batteries in small spaces near subways and overpasses and bridges. i certainly all of the lightboards weren’t in spots like that, plenty were easy to see, but the ones that were, well, better safe than sorry i guess?
in a time when people can make bombs out of sneakers and ipods and water bottles, what’s the harm in just notifying a city’s police force or government that you are going to be doing this?
and fwiw, i don’t think the folks that hung them should be punished, just the folks that didn’t necessarily think about notifying anyone in advance.
I too am going against all the hindsight folks on here. A device doesn’t have to be large to be explosive or dangerous. It doesn’t even have to look bomb-like. What, if it’s not red dynamite held together with a string and a clock it’s not dangerous? Hell, if a man can fit bomb materials in the soles of his shoes, I think you can cut the City of Boston a break for being concerned about unlabelled, unpermitted, black boxes taped to the bottom of bridges that millions of people cross every day. And Boston isn’t a “big target city?” Do you know how major the port is? Where half the country gets its LNG shipped into? And, yes, the bomb shoes guy landed in Logan. The 9/11 guys flew out of Logan. Oh yeah, Boston’s just over-reacting. Please. Those idiots could have *at least* labelled the boxes. They’re idiots, pure and simple. And the City is not embarrassed, it’s ANGRY.
i love athf and adult swim but this has got to be the dumbest idea ever. we live in a very scary age and to plant something that could even remotely be thought of as a bomb around town near hospitals and bridges is just asking for trouble. yes those guys should be punished but they shouldn’t be the only ones. whoever authorized this idiotic stunt should get theirs too.
“Those idiots could have *at least* labelled the boxes.”
You mean the LED figure covering the entire box is not label enough? This wasn’t a weird black box. It was a flat LED controller with a cartoon character on it. It doesn’t require “hindsight” to recognize the character, which incidentally had also been displayed in an ILLUMINATED 15 foot tall billboard on I-93 for months before this.
People are watching too much 24 and Bond. Real bombs don’t have LED displays to clue you in that they are a bomb.
Having said that, putting the ad under a bridge is retarded. But as I said, felony charges can’t stick.
Also, the bomb squad guys aren’t really to blame. They have to follow protocol on all calls, they are risking their lives after all.
This was a “non incident” in Seattle. Note to self: never visit Boston. Their sense of humor is lacking.
The sky is not falling, people!
The city officials look like complete fools. 38 of these things have been up in their city (along with 9 other cities) for nigh on 3 weeks, and this is a cause for panic? The Attorney General’s comments that “”It’s clear the intent was to get attention by causing fear and unrest that there was a bomb in that location,” is amongst the most moronic things ever stated. I hope the public sees this as the molehill it is instead of the mountain the Boston mayor makes it out to be.