Let’s all sing it now:
“Lite Brite, making things with light. What a sight, making things with Lite Brite!”
I think it’s hilarious (or possibly very sad) that news shows feel they have to mask out three little points of light that represent a middle finger.
If it turns out that is what happened, then its a dick move and whoever did it was wrong and should probably be prosecuted. But there’s no evidence of that now.
Here is the timeline according to the Boston Globe
My wild-ass guess about what happened was that the guy on the bus saw one of the Mooninites in the daylight, had no idea what it was, so they called in and reported something suspicious. The bomb squad did what they were trained to do and treated it like they would any other suspicious device. They figured out it was harmless. Somebody who did know what it was saw the cops treating an LED cartoon character like it was filled with plutonium, thought “What a bunch of dipshits!” and then called the cops with the locations of several other of the devices. (this accounts for the sudden flurry of reports five hours after the inital “sighting”. Suddenly, the decision makers who weren’t on the original scene and who didn’t know that the first “device” found was, in fact, a cartoon character who smokes while he shoots the bird, think they have uncovered a terrorist plot and alert the media. Sensationalism ensues until, three hours later, someone at Turner in Atlanta figures out what was going on and calls the Boston PD.
**Brite Lites **
**On a bridge too far **
**They let folks see **
**How dumb **
PD in B are
I Burma Shave your dog! 
I would think the collector aspect of this should not be ignored, this AS thread shows that:
http://boards.adultswim.com/adultswim/board/message?board.id=3&message.id=550613&jump=true
The ads were designed to be able to be pulled down for collecting. (Get it NOW if you can!)
Noticed more than a week ago.
Penis did not ensue. (I bet Opal will get mad now!)
The authorities’ overreaction isn’t so absurd when you realize that these things were stuck up under bridges, on highway support columns, and in other such places where they’re not very visible (unlike billboards, folks, no billboards involved here) and where a bomb would in fact be a very bad thing. Also, as I understand it, these “packages” would light up at night but not during the day, so what would be seen in daylight would be a vaguely technical-looking board with wires and batteries, sitting well above head height (unlike, say, graffiti), attached to structures whose bombing would cause massive chaos and quite likely significant loss of life.
Stupid, stupid, stupid ad campaign. Turner’s going to be getting a very big bill for all this. Reminds me of the “Wee for a Wii” debacle – did nobody think through all the ways this could go wrong?
So what happens if Turner refuses to pay? Is there a law against what they did? “They shoulda known we would go apeshit” is a poor basis for a lawsuit.
Holy Moly Jim Zarroli. My, what a bunch of douchebags we’ve become.
Look, if we’re going to freak out about LEDs and circuit boards, I say we smash our computers. The insurgents may be controlling them!
Bravo, **vibrotronica **. That’s sounds just about right. Bostonians should be ashamed of themselves but instead of being ashamed they’re blaming AS for scaring them.
Just sad.
I see by the photo that accompanies the article that the terrorists, or whatever, depend on Duracell Coppertop batteries. Now I don’t know whether to buy them myself, or boycott the company.
A press conference by the state Attorney General, the Boston Police Commissioner, and the Mayor of Boston just wrapped up. Among the information:
Two devices initially reported – one under the Longfellow Bridge, the other at New England Medical Center – were reported to be pipe bombs, and one of those in fact was not part of the ad campaign.
City officials weren’t notified by Turner until 5:00 p.m. – an hour after the previous press conference announcing that it was all a hoax, and several hours after initial reports of the scare appeared on Turner’s subsidiary CNN.
The mayor’s office received no call from Turner until 9:00 p.m., and that was from a PR flunky, not an executive of Turner. Mayor Menino himself has yet to speak with any Turner representative.
A few months previously, a similar sort of guerilla compaign was undertaken on the West Coast in which mysterious boxes were planted in various office buildings, leading to a number of bomb scare calls to authorities. Since this happened in Los Angeles, I’d say it’s not too much of a stretch to believe that at least some of the people involved in this stupid stunt would have known about the problems caused by the previous one.
Oh, yeh, almost forgot – no firm numbers yet on what this cost, but it’s over a hundred thousand just in direct personnel costs.
YouTube video of the guys putting the signs up.
That’s what’s so pathetic about this: any investigation is just so much drama in an attempt to save face. The authorities humiliated themselves over a neon sign, and now they’re looking to arrest someone for making them look like jackasses.
Hey, listen feel sorry for us Bostonians. We may not have been attacked by terrorists today, but we did just find out the people who are supposed to protect us are completely retarded. I’m not sure which is worse.
All I can gather from all of this is that the Boston PD must be staffed entirely by Plutonians. I suggest we spank them all with moon rocks.
I’d make some stickers, with “Think this looks like a bomb? Maybe if I added a few wires and LEDs it would help?” and stick them on trash cans, abandoned paper boxes, hell, mailboxes, newspaper vendors, things that would ACTUALLY be sensible for a “bomb hoax”, and watch what happened.
If fact, I remember a drink that had a bottle in the shape of a grenade, la bomba or something like that. I wonder if Joe Q public would think THAT was a bomb threat as well.
Bomb hoax. Sheesh. Like Joe Q public even knows what a bomb is supposed to look like, apart from “It has wires and LEDs!”
LEDs. Gah. Integral for any self respecting bomb, I suppose.
People in Oklahoma city didn’t think one would look like a pickup truck.
People in New York didn’t think one would look like a 767.
And for some strange reason I have to remove my shoes before I can get on a plane.
I miss the good ol days when a bomb looked like the classic Boris and Natasha bowling ball with a 2 inch wick.
The first comment on that video link speaks my opinion entirely.
Ding ding ding! Someone from Homeland Security even referred to it as a “hoax.” From whence are these officials divining that the marketers WANTED people to think it was a bomb?
Yeah, that’s why I wet myself and call the police every time I see a pickup truck, a plane, or a shoe.
Yeah, 1770 was a good year wasn’t it.
No. These are not “mysterious,” nondescript items. They are light-up pictures of either a pink or green pixel character. In the Yahoo! article about the arrest, it said that one of the things was reported as a pipe bomb. Pipe bomb my hirsute, Slavic ass!
These were not meant to resemble anything sinister! Like Marley said, This was not a goddamned hoax! It is a LIE to characterize it as one, unless the person who first made the call had known what they were.
Once they stop sputtering and stammering out something remotely resembling a legal argument, I predict that they will try to say mischief was intended because Ignignokt and Err are themselves mischievous. I expect no less from such titans of level-headedness and restraint.