Unfortunately, I think people do both.

Hear hear. I say such press conferences are what we need MORE of.

I will say this: while I stand by the idea that the entire thing was (or should have been) harmless, there's no question that it was a poor marketing ploy, especially in the current society we're living in where anything that's small and electronic could possibly be conceived as a bomb.

Now, while it was a poor campaign, I really don't agree with putting blame upon Adult Swim for it, or at least not to a major extent. While they could have been conceived (and well, were conceived) to be bombs by those seeing them, the reason they turned out to cause so much panic was because people didn't stop to think. Like Mr. Marshmallow basically said, if these were bombs, they were quite possibly the most poorly crafted bombs ever imagined.

The thing about the press conference was this: was the way they behaved themselves in poor taste? Yes. I can't really argue with that. However, even with it being in bad taste, I think they were treating it, oddly enough, in the most logical way possible. That is, they were treating a ridiculous event well....ridiculously. So, while not in good taste, I will admit I was amused by it. I do, however, feel bad for their lawyer. I would've hated attempting to defend those two and explain how they were acting while that was going on.

For the moment, I'll refrain from saying much of anything else, because my own personal bias of the show (I own all four DVDs) will almost certainly make me defend the show more than any logical person should. While I stretch, if Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis called their fans to them in order to summon some kind of bizarre militia, I would probably fight and die in their service. You all probably think I'm kidding; sadly, while even I don't know for certain, I'm probably not.

I'll end with this before I babble any longer: I think the Mooninites have finally proven that The Moon Rulez #1.

I was so enraptured with the events, that I changed my avatar and signature.


Nevar forget.

This reeks of cynicism. Some marketing jerk realised that no publicity is bad publicity and manufactured this whole sorry incident. Wouldn't put it past em spreading the blatently ridiculous bomb story. It wasn't like that Wild Wild West incident from a few years ago that genuinely was badly thought out marketing.

As for these 2, I'd make them take something that makes their hair fall out permanantly. Then see how keen they are to talk about damn hair.

LMAOOOOOO!!!! xDDD

That's great.

It's nice that you found a cause to support, but I removed your sig and avatar because they were inappropriate for this forum. Which leads me to my opinion on the "campaign" - I like the Mooninites and all, but it was tacky to place images of a character flipping the bird all over the place for everyone and their child to have to look at. Yes, I know there are "worse" things out there, but I don't support those either, not when they're in public areas. It's like when I worked at a major theme park in southern California, we'd get people who would wear a plain t-shirt when entering the park then go to a restroom and switch to one with vulgar language on it, or images of characters having sex, because it gave them a thrill to break the rules. Meanwhile families had their vacations (which they had planned and worked for for possibly a long time) dampened. I'm just saying, inappropriate imagery is best kept to areas only frequented by people who care to see it.

However, that particular image wasn't really all *that* bad (I noticed no one really cared about that anyways), and the whole bomb thing I find silly. I don't think people should have raised such a stink over that. A slap on the wrist, I guess I can see. And I can support the guys treating the situation as they have if that's what they want to do.

I saw a video on Youtube of them putting the things up, and they were really small and kind of in corners and stuff, so it's a bit surprising people noticed them at all. I wouldn't have, but I'm not very observant in general.

I agree that it's a bit tacky, but not too bad since the characters in question are ones you could make a reasonably realistic depiction of on an Etch-a-Sketch. It probably didn't help with the whole bomb thing, though, since if the motivation for terrorism were to be summed up in a hand gesture, that would be it. They wouldn't be covered in lights, of course, but maybe some words or something would have helped instead of just putting up the things and letting people (especially people who apparently don't watch Adult Swim since nobody recognized them) draw their own conclusions.

The hair thing in the press conference is funny, but I like how that one reporter totally went with it. "Are you afraid that if you go to prison they'll cut your hair?" Smoooth.

But Adult Swim is at the top of the Ratings for Adults 18-34 How could so many people not know the moonites.

personally I think these type of advertising is pointless, particularly because how is it suppose to tell people about the movie. now even a WWW or a name on the sign. But it seems like CN likes these Inside Joke type advertising, I do not know why because it will not attract new viewers if they do not even know where the ad came from


MOnty :-/

Yeah, I agree -- if they know what it means, they watch it already, and if they don't know what it means, they've never heard of the show. I don't know how it would bring in new viewers or anything.

I didn't really take this as much as a movie promotion, but simply a promotion of the show itself. Aqua teen is pretty big now even before the movie was being produced, so promotion of it on any kind of level seemed almost inevitable.

I personally think this is too funny to take seriously. I mean yes it was a dumb thing to do, sneaking around putting bright weird devices on random locations to promote a cartoon show. But then again, Adult Swim is right up weird alley.

People make costumes, models, statues, and all kinds of weird crap to promote ATHF. This was obviously a much more advanced and public means of promotion, but I think it was just more like fandom power then advertising bout the movie.

But that's just me.