> Wasn't the context that people were concerned about terrorist attacks with bombs in high-impact locations, against concentrations of people and key civil infrastructure?

Yes, people were paranoid about terrorism in 2007.

>And someone decided to be edgy, and intentionally use this context, by placing something that could be mistaken for a bomb made by a crazy person, exactly in those locations? (Or even do those as decoys, to support a separate attack.)

No. There’s no evidence of this.

> Of course the early emergency responses were life-critical urgent, with no one having complete information.

Only in Boston. The signs were also placed in LA and Portland without incident.

> And once they did have information, you can see how a company abusing fresh terrorism concerns like that, with what was arguably a hoax attack, for commercial promotion purposes, would still have a lot of explaining to do.

There’s no evidence these were intended to be perceived as a threat. You have imagined this.

> Random kids huffing "Chill out, it's just a prank" doesn't make it all OK.

You say “random kids”. I say “rational adults”.

> And all the dissing of emergency responders, who reasonably had to act as if this might be another terrorist attack, didn't seem very fair, nor thought-out.

Emergency responders have a responsibility to handle reality appropriately. Boston’s response was inappropriate. Being scared doesn’t justify overreaction.

> It might help to look at another Boston terrorism incident, the Boston Marathon bombing. Bombs went off, no one knew the extent of the attack, and, while the crowd was rightly trying to run away from the danger, emergency responders were running towards the explosions, to help protect people.

It doesn’t help to make this comparison. One is a benign marketing campaign and the other was a terrorist attack.

> Why mock that? We need that.

The ends don’t justify the means. First responders have a duty to protect the public which they failed by creating the Mooninite Panic.

First responders are not above criticism.