Remember When the Mooninite Bomb Scare Shut Down Boston?

January 31, 2007. A guerilla marketing campaign for an upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie goes horribly wrong, and Boston panics. I watched it happen.

 

I was on-air at WBCN at the time. Right around 2 p.m., as I was yielding the studio to the Toucher & Rich show, Fred Toucher and I noticed the news was reporting a number of unidentified electronic devices in and around the Boston area. They showed one: it was a Lite-Brite rendition of a Mooninite, one of the character’s from Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force TV show. We knew this. Unfortunately, no one in the local or national news world or on the BPD seemed to know this. So all hell broke loose, despite our best efforts at BCN to spread the word.

 

I’ll let Rich pick up the thread from here.

 

• No one would listen

  I remember being live on the air, calling every news station that day, telling them exactly what that sign was, and everyone ignoring us. No one reported it was an Aquateen Hunger Force ad until about five hours later, meanwhile the city was in chaos. Crazy day. https://t.co/45XKbwmJXR

  — Toucher & Hardy (@toucherandhardy) January 31, 2022

• The listeners knew, though

  @Toucherandrich thanks to @adamxii for the friendly reminder of the time I saw a bomb tank strolling down Harvard Ave. I looked like a psychopath laughing at it after listening to the fellas on ‘BCN pic.twitter.com/mrhPiniBKV

  — Legion of Dudes (@LegionOfDudes_) January 31, 2022

• The news media, however

• Here's legendary Boston reporter Jorge Quiroga sorting it all out

• The post-panic press conference was pure gold

• Mayor Menino was forgiving, years later