useless_modern_godAug 27, 2023

TIL of GUERRILLA MARKETING and the GREAT MOONINITE PANIC of 2007 : or How a tiny LED sign turned a city upside down.

https://aussie.zone/post/1484426

TIL of GUERRILLA MARKETING and the GREAT MOONINITE PANIC of 2007 : or How a tiny LED sign turned a city upside down. - Aussie Zone

👉 Boston.com article [https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2017/01/31/looking-back-at-the-boston-mooninite-panic-10-years-later/] 👉 Wiki [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic] On the morning of January 31, 2007, the Boston Police Department and the Boston Fire Department mistakenly identified battery-powered LED placards depicting the Mooninites, characters from the Adult Swim animated television series Aqua Teen Hunger Force, as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), leading to a massive panic.

Show threadFlying Squid
I remember that. I never watched that show so I had no idea what the reference was, but if I had seen it in person, I would have just thought it was viral marketing. What’s so scary about it?
Aug 27, 2023 at 8:53amWeb
Show threadBiffAug 27, 2023
I did see it and knew what it referenced. There was nothing scary at all about it, it was clearly an LED sign. I couldn’t believe how massive an over reaction there was to it by the police. Terrorists tend not to put bright LEDs on their weapons as an advertisement.
Show threadSCBAug 27, 2023

People were still pretty 9/11 crazy in those days and I remember thinking the reaction was way more entertaining than even the marketing.

As a huge ATHF fan at the time, it just really spoke to me.

Show threadpelrunSep 3, 2023
Boston PD were(are) out of their minds. They also blew up an ordinary traffic counting device deployed by the city.