At this point, I think I may be the only blogger in Boston who hasn't posted about the recent debacle with the bomb scares & the Aqua Teen Hunger Force viral marketing. There have been a variety of opinions on whether this was a annoying, stupid hoax or a quirky marketing campaign that Boston police grossly misinterpreted. I'm leaning towards the latter opinion.On one level, I do appreciate that the police took the threat of "suspicious packages" throughout the city seriously & took appropriate action. However, I find it so difficult to believe that NO ONE in the entire Boston police department was able to recognize the cartoon character depicted above ("Err" from ATHF) & realize that the whole thing was harmless. I read an article about a year ago (can't remember where) that said that Adult Swim's key demographic was males aged 18-30. Surely there a few of those on the Boston police force?
I've been watching Adult Swim, and particularly Aqua Teen, since about 2001. I own season one on DVD. The show has been around for something like seven years, people. If anyone had walked into a Newbury Comics or Virgin Records near the location of one of the alleged "bombs," they could have purchased a DVD showing Err, a smart-ass little alien, in action.
Maybe it's just because I'm Generation Y (or whatever they call us). But I find it a tad ridiculous that there was no one on the city of Boston's pay roll who couldn't spot a harmless marketing campaign when they saw one.
4 comments:
This even made the news in Scotland! Well, the Daily Show's Global Edition. Also, I just joined the blogging community today:-)
The cops did recognize it (see this chronology. The problem is that just as they figured it out, they started getting reports of other, non-mooninite "bombs," including what looked like a pipe bomb left at NEMC by some crazy guy yelling about judgment day.
I must be living in a cave, because I had never heard of the show before. Maybe because I don't have cable. Or maybe because I'm in the tail end of Generation X. It's hard to keep up with what the kids are watching these days :)
the term "generation y" makes me want to claw someone's eyes out. as does "the millenial generation."
and really, are they one and the same, or different? who are these arbitrary decision makers about generation monikers and cut-off dates, and why are they messing with us like this? argh.
sometimes, strange things bother me.
Post a Comment