Is the Alamogordo dump story real or fake?

[homerwannabee]

After taking the trip and talking to a few people, reading it in the papers, seeing the dump, I voted yes it did happen.

852965[/snapback]

Are you sure you didn't vote Yes to it being fake?

853020[/snapback]

To Clear things up for Gregory DG. Yes is you the story to be true. No means you think the story is fake.

[G.Whiz]

I think everyone is right: the burial happened and there was an urban myth developed about it.

 

I remember when the whole thing went down -- it was big news for a day or two. If I remember correctly, Atari claimed that it was disposing of a huge cache of "defective" cartridges. They didn't work, so they just got rid of them.

 

Of course the big question was why they dumped the whole cartridge, and not just the chips. After all, the actual cartridge casing could be reused. But Atari said that the effort it would take to remove the chips, strip off the labels, and put them back into production would be monumental compared to just making a new one. And this makes sense from a business perspective, when you think about it. In mass production, those carts would cost pennies to produce -- even back then.

 

However, the media started to speculate that there may be more to it. Overstocking of many titles, not just E.T., prompted Atari to dump the carts in an effort to keep the price up. At that point, Atari was reaching its peak, and sales of new units (and correspondingly, new carts) were about to slow. In the straightforward supply and demand market, there was too much supply which threatened to undermine the pricing.

 

Personally, I believe that these were just defective carts. Back then, Atari was like a rock star and any move they made was scrutinized. Chucking carts, for any reason, would have been newsworthy given the popularity of them.

 

An 800-pound gorilla can put its garbage anywhere it wants, but it can't do it quietly...

 

~G

[Thomas Jentzsch]

No, it is real.

[sidcrowe]

When I worked for Kmart for a short time, I was purposefully destroying food items all the time, under orders. Nobody made any written record of it, or took pictures, so I guess it can't be "proved," but destruction of stock happened very often.

 

I wasn't even allowed to take some for myself

Edited May 12, 2005 by sidcrowe