Urbanite

The Star Wars ad lit up at night; the day shot is below. More examples of the ad campaign here.(Rolando Pujol)

Kudos to Spike for this incredibly cool bus-shelter ad. The network has installed Stars Wars faux "light sabers" where the ad would normally go, with the promo text at the bottom. We are instructed to "use only in case of Sith." At first, we thought we were seeing the fluorescent lights of an empty ad slot, not a clever ad campaign. We snapped this at West 34th Street and Eighth Avenue Tuesday. More examples of the campaign can be found here.

Though nobody has been dumb enough to smash the glass and try to grab the pseudo sabers -- yet -- this campaign reminds us of the media kerfuffle that Levis created in 1996. The company sandwiched $50 Dockers pants into bus shelters, and people being people, they proceeded to smash and grab them. Here's a Channel 5 report on that incident, with Rudy Giuliani slamming the campaign and a pre-MTA Elliot Sander, then running the Department of Transportation, promising ad-policy changes.

-- Rolando Pujol

* See photos of die-hard Star Wars fans

* Photos from Phantom Menace

* Photos from Attack of the Clones