He Terrorized an Entire City - The Mooninites Boston Panic Story
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What happened when the Aqua Teen guerrilla marketing campaign arrived in Boston?
Do you remember when that cartoon marketing campaign sent an entire city into panic mode because people thought terrorists were placing bombs everywhere? Now this story starts with this guy, his name's Zebler. And Zebler is 27 during this time and he's living in Boston and he works as a freelance artist. One day, around 2006-2007, he gets a message from this guy. John. And John works for a marketing company in New York that has been hired to promote a movie. The movie he's going to promote is based on a TV show titled Aqua Teen Hunger Force. You know, that cartoon about a box of fries, a milkshake, and a talking meatball? I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. Now, it's John and his company's job to come up with a promotional campaign for this movie.
Who were Zebler and Sean and how did they get involved with the Mooninite signs?
And instead of running a bunch of normal ads on TV or whatever, John and his company, they want to try something different. They want to do something a little offbeat and confusing, something that can create a lot of buzz. So they come up with this idea to make LED boxes of one of the show's characters called the Moonenites. Here's one of them here flipping the middle finger. Once they make these LED boxes, their plan is to place the signs in random places within major cities across the country. And that is exactly what they do. They start placing them in nine different cities, including Los Angeles and Chicago. But then it's time to place them in Boston. So John tells Zebler that he has about 40 of these blinking Moonanite signs, and he wants him to install them in certain spots around the city.
And for this gig, he offers to pay Zebler $300. And Zebler's like, sweet! I guess he needs the money. But he figures that he can't hang 40 signs all by himself, so he asks his friend to help him. His friend is this guy, Sean. And so Sean hears this idea and he's also like, sweet! So Zebler and Sean, they go and pick up the signs. And together they set the whole thing up and they put in all the batteries and they wire the LED boxes properly and whatnot. Once they're done, they head out and they start placing the 40 LED boxes all across Boston. They put them on the subway, on bridges, on highways. Basically, they put them anywhere where a lot of people will pass so that a lot of people will see them. So after however long, they end up finishing the job and they're done.
And several days go by. And it's hard to say if their ad campaign is working because, you know, there's no news, there's no buzz around these light boxes. It's almost like no one really notices them. So these guys are starting to think that maybe the whole ad campaign failed. But then, things start to get out of control. Because at one point, a random pedestrian is at a local subway station, and he sees one of the boxes. And this guy is thinking, what the hell is that? I mean, he doesn't know what it means. I guess he's never seen the show. But he sees that there are batteries and some electrical wiring connected to this thing. And he immediately becomes suspicious. Why is there an 8-bit character hanging on the wall?
Why is he flipping the middle finger? Why is there wires connected to it? Is this some sort of bomb? So this dude starts freaking out a little, and he alerts the police at the local police station. And soon, an officer arrives, and he sees it, and he doesn't know what the hell it is either. He's thinking it could possibly be a bomb. So this officer calls the bomb squad and he tells them that they need to come check this thing out because it might be an explosive or something. And so the bomb squad hears this and they take it seriously. And pretty quickly, the bomb squad unit is on their way. And once they arrive, they start looking at this moonanite light and they also don't know what the hell it is.
What was the advertising company's plan for placing 40 LED Mooninite boxes?
But when they see all the batteries and the electrical wiring, they conclude that it's an IED or an improvised explosive device. So they begin treating it like an actual bomb. And so as a precaution, they start evacuating people out of the area, just in case this alleged bomb goes off.
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3 chaptersSpeakers
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