• Associated Press / Mercury News, Tuesday, May 2, 2006 11:45 AM

A clever marketing promotion for Tom Cruise’s new movie, “Mission: Impossible III,” went seriously awry when Los Angeles County police thought a news rack rigged to play the movie’s theme song contained a bomb and decided to blow it up.  A few thousand news racks selling the Los Angeles Times were fitted with a musical device that would play the “Mission Impossible” theme when a consumer opened the box to buy a paper.  The only problem was that in some cases, the device--a red plastic box with protruding wires--was jarred loose and dropped onto the stack of newspapers inside, alarming customers. L.A.County sheriff's officials said they rendered the news rack "safe" by destroying it after being called to the scene by a concerned individual who thought he'd seen a bomb. Times officials said the devices were placed in 4,500 randomly selected news boxes in Los Angeles and Ventura counties in a venture with Paramount Pictures designed to turn the "everyday news rack experience" into an "extraordinary mission." "This was the least intended outcome. We weren't expecting anything like this," said John O'Loughlin, the Times' senior vice president for planning.

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