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2007 Boston Mooninite panic (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 2 days ago by nocturne@slrpnk.net to c/wikipedia@lemmy.world

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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. Placed throughout Boston, Massachusetts, and the surrounding cities of Cambridge and Somerville by Peter "Zebbler" Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, these devices were part of a nationwide guerrilla marketing advertising campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters.

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[–] human@slrpnk.net 18 points 2 days ago (3 children)

The article males a big deal about officials not being able to identify the mooninites, but I'm much more concerned that they weren't able to identify an explosive device.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 5 points 2 days ago

The fact that they didn't look at it and see a cartoon character is the best part! They literally didn't have anyone around them who were competent enough to see this and think 'hey, that looks like a cartoon character, maybe we should look into that instead of starting a panic'.

[–] nocturne@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Edit: replied to the wrong comment, in the wrong thread, in the wrong community.

[–] drcobaltjedi@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

This happened in other cities and they didn't panic, only Boston. Hell the article even states one police department wasn't going to do anything about their mooninite litebrights since they couldn't identify a crime