When Mission Impossible’s promotional stunt triggered citywide bomb hoaxes in LA, led to a federal lawsuit against the studio

When Mission Impossible marketing went wrong

Tom Cruise stepped back into his Ethan Hunt shoes for the third part of the franchise for director JJ Abrams. Just days before the release, the promo team planted little red music boxes in about 4,500 newspaper racks across LA and Ventura counties. The idea was simple, nothing flashy, open the rack, and the Mission Impossible theme would start playing, turning an everyday task into something straight out of a spy movie. But the stunt didn’t land as planned.

Some of those devices slipped out of hiding and landed straight on the newspapers. Not one or two, but several. So now, when people opened the racks, what they found wasn’t a music box but a six-inch red box with wires sticking out. This was only a few years after 9/11 had shaken the entire United States, so people were already walking on eggshells. Instead of vibing to a song, bystanders saw a threat and panicked as they thought that this red box could be a bomb. One vigilant citizen even dialled 911, convinced they’d stumbled onto a bomb.

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The LA County Sheriff’s arson squad was called in, and one newsstand was even blown up just to be safe. Once the story went viral, phones at the station wouldn’t stop buzzing with the same complaints from all over. In West LA, things took a damaging turn at the Veterans Affairs Medical Centre, where federal police found a suspicious box outside on a rack. The hospital evacuated nearly 300 people for two hours. Investigation later revealed there were roughly 4,500 of these devices scattered across the city, before authorities finally discovered it was nothing more than a bizarre Paramount marketing stunt.

Later, the medical centre claimed the evacuation cost them over $92,000 in damages. The assistant US attorney even sent letters to Paramount and The LA Times, threatening a federal lawsuit. The accusations ranged from reckless behaviour to prompting a code red situation in sensitive areas like the government hospital filled with war veterans, many dealing with PTSD. In the end, the case was thrown out, but the embarrassment was real.

Well, this was not the only marketing disaster that year. Shortly before this, Turner Broadcasting’s blinking LED devices in Boston, promoting Aqua Teen Hunger Force, also triggered bomb scares and shut down parts of the city.