{"id":2512,"date":"2010-07-15T11:48:25","date_gmt":"2010-07-15T16:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/65.175.102.14\/?p=2512"},"modified":"2014-06-21T23:44:50","modified_gmt":"2014-06-22T04:44:50","slug":"my-admission-to-the-rocket-poppeteers-astronaut-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=2512","title":{"rendered":"My admission to the Rocket Poppeteers Astronaut Program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is an update to a post I originally wrote about a little tidbit I discovered through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/2010\/05\/14\/new-super-8-viral-details\/\" target=\"_blank\">\/film<\/a> back in May. It&#8217;s a pretty cool &#8220;viral marketing&#8221; campaign for an upcoming movie. This one just happens to feature North Dakota. It all started with this movie teaser trailer:<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.dailymotion.com\/embed\/video\/xgd7my\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center>At the end of the trailer there&#8217;s a flicker of film leader that someone took still images of to get the words &#8220;SCARIEST THING I EVER SAW.&#8221; From there they decided to visit the website &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/scariestthingieversaw.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">scariestthingieversaw.com<\/a>.&#8221; On that website was a simulator for a PDP-11, an old mainframe computer like the ones I used to get in trouble on in the 80s. It displayed a timer, and once the timer counted down certain features were enabled. One of those was to print these two images:<\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/images\/super8_pages.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" border=\"0\" \/><\/center><center>Click to view\/download: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/wp\/wp-content\/images\/newspaper1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Image 1<\/a> &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/wp\/wp-content\/images\/newspaper2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Image 2<\/a><\/center><br \/>\nWhen you print them out, they appear to be newspaper pages from the 1940s that have some hidden features. One of the not-so-hidden features is an ad for Rocket Poppeteers, a popsicle-like treat. JJ Abrams is known to put fictitious foods in his movies and mention them by name, but this one&#8217;s getting some prominent treatment. (Yes, there&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/rocketpoppeteers.com\" target=\"_blank\">rocketpoppeteers.com<\/a> website, but it doesn&#8217;t do anything&#8230;yet.) The ad contains a form to mail in to &#8220;Become a Rocket Poppeteer and Join the Race to Outer Space!&#8221; Where do you send it? Minot, North Dakota.<\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/images\/super8_form_1649.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"334\" border=\"0\" \/><\/center>Naturally, being the curious sort, I filled out one of these forms to see what might happen. So far, nothing has been mailed back to me. <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Men_in_Black\" target=\"_blank\">No MIBs have showed up at my house<\/a>, even ones posing as census workers. If that changes, I&#8217;ll let you know.<\/p>\n<p>Why does Minot tie into this? Well, the teaser trailer seems to center around Area 51 and UFOs &amp; aliens. UFO believers have reports of UFO activity around United States nuclear weapons facilities going back for decades, so it makes sense that the movie would include a reference to North Dakota&#8230;a somewhat remote, maybe even mysterious to some, place with lots of nukes. The X-Files featured an episode where a UFO was hidden in a hollowed-out nuclear missile silo in North Dakota, so why not take the idea to feature film?<\/p>\n<p>Being familiar with central North Dakota, the presence of Air Force bases and nuclear weapons in our great state, and the whole UFO conspiracy theory subculture to a degree, I got a kick out of this viral campaign. While I&#8217;m not one of the UFO conspiracy theorists, I find them entertaining to watch. It&#8217;ll be interesting to see where and how far this movie takes this campaign and how heavily it features our great state.<\/p>\n<p><center>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212; UPDATE &#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/center>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/images\/rocket_poppeteers_4125.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"324\" border=\"0\" \/><\/center>Here&#8217;s where the new stuff starts: I got a letter in the mail from Rocket Poppeteers yesterday. Enclosed is a congratulatory letter, in 1940s-era typewriter font, with my name handwritten in a blank salutation.<\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/images\/rocket_poppeteers_scan01.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"230\" border=\"0\" \/><\/center>As you can see, the letter has the Minot PO Box return address and a legitimate Minot, ND postmark. Whoever is checking the post office box, filling out the letters, and mailing them out is presumably from the Minot area.<\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/images\/rocket_poppeteers_scan02.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"255\" border=\"0\" \/><\/center>This is the text of the letter, although there&#8217;s more on the page. The letter mentions a &#8216;Captain &#8220;Coop&#8221; Cooper&#8217; a couple of times, so I suppose he&#8217;ll be featured in the movie. There&#8217;s no official information available at this time, at least none that I found.<\/p>\n<p>Since the letter asks, &#8220;Are you ready to begin?&#8221; I can only hope that this is the start of a continued Rocket Poppeteers adventure &#8211; and that North Dakota may feature heavily in the upcoming Super8 movie. If I receive any additional mail or details, I&#8217;ll post it here!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is an update to a post I originally wrote about a little tidbit I discovered through \/film back in May. It&#8217;s a pretty cool &#8220;viral marketing&#8221; campaign for an upcoming movie. This one just happens to feature North Dakota. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=2512\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2512"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4045,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512\/revisions\/4045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}