Why so serious, KENS 5?

Today, the Current received a Dark Knight viral-marketing cake with chocolate icing and a cell phone inside. It was in a plain box with no distinguishing marks and didn’t say BATMAN!! on it, but did we panic? No. Why? Because, 1) we are hardcore, 2) strange cake is nom-nom, 3) we were wondering why we hadn’t gotten one sooner, truth be told; we've been reading about this sort of thing happening in other cities since before Christmas.

Apparently, KENS 5 received the very same cake earlier today, and the following article appeared on mysa.com this afternoon:

“A promotion for the upcoming release of "Dark Knight" prompted an evacuation at KENS 5 Eyewitness News this morning.

Firefighters and police were called to the station after a suspicious cake with a number written in icing with a wire sticking out was delivered in an unmarked box to the station shortly after 11 a.m.

Employees were allowed back into the building just before noon after firefighters determined everything was safe.

A spokeswoman for Santikos Theaters said an e-mail should have been sent to the station alerting them about the cake being delivered Tuesday morning.”

I discussed the event with Bob McGann, the president and general manager of KENS TV, at about 4 p.m, who felt the publicity prank had been badly executed. He reemphazied that the box bore no labels, and described the protruding wires. "That looked like a bomb," he said. "We'd much rather be on the safe side."

Charges are not being pressed.

Had the box been labeled would it still have been considered a prank? Methinks the menacing Joker of The Dark Knight would probably have been pleased with the commotion. Fortunately, though, this prank was played in the spirit of fun.

(The moral of this story is that it’s always handy to have a 25-year-old fanboy or girl [or three] lying around to prevent the needless dispatch of law-enforcement officials ...)

Posted by Ashley Lindstrom on 7/15/2008
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