December 2, 2004

Memos Reveal SpongeBob Thefts a Giant Publicity Stunt

Police Seek the Mastermind Who Fooled a Gullible Media

Memos discovered yesterday in a dumpster behind a West Los Angeles office building indicate the nationwide thefts of the large inflatable SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon characters from the roofs of Burger King outlets are all part of a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign.

The memos were retrieved from a dumpster by refuse workers on their weekly run. They outline a step by step plan to use precision timing all around the country to steadily ratchet up media coverage of the thefts and increase awareness of the SpongeBob SquarePants movie that opened over the Thanksgiving weekend.

The memos were taken by the refuse workers to radio station KTBB, an all-talk station, which broadcast details of the memos all day yesterday. Late in the afternoon, the station turned the memos over to Los Angeles police. An investigation was underway last night.

KTTB said the memos appeared to come from a company named Inflated Media, which apparently had been retained by another unnamed firm that had a role in publicizing the SpongeBob film.

"If this is true, it's truly outrageous," said Beverly Winslow, a spokeswoman for the National Coalition for the Efficient Use of Police Power, based in Provo, Utah. "Thousands of hours of police manpower have been used all over the country in the last week trying to chase down thieves of the SpongeBob inflatables, and it's all a hoax to fool the press?"

It was difficult to determine how many of the dozens or even hundreds of thefts of the six-foot cartoon character across the country might have been part of a publicity campaign. However, in at least a handful of cases, police have actually caught people, mostly teens or college students, who confessed to taking a SpongeBob inflatable.

"We have solved two of our thefts and the perps were locals," said a spokeswoman for the Columbus, Ohio police department. "If the other thefts are part of a Hollywood stunt, I hope somebody is brought to justice." More than a dozen of the inflatables were stolen in the Columbus area.

A source in the Los Angeles Police Department said calls from more than two dozen police departments around the country had been received requesting copies of the documents found by the refuse workers.

The doors were locked yesterday at the West Los Angeles offices of Inflated Media. The company's phones went unanswered. A custodian in the small office building where the offices are located said he hadn't seen any inflated media employees in the last week or so.

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