This sounds like the precious darlings made something out of modelling clay and grandma thought it was a bright idea to stick it on the display. Since some believe it is Toyota's fault because they didn't say, "don't put crap on the display", on Toyota's behalf I say to all the dim bulbs out there:

DON'T PUT CRAP ON ANY DISPLAYS

Grandma should be reported to DYFS for Prius abuse.

I imagine the oil in the clay attacked the touch screen coating on the MFD. It doesn't take much thinking to realize you don't want to stick things on a touch screen.

Tom

Its also a bad idea to store floppy discs by using a magnet to stick them to the side of a file cabinet or to the refrigerator. :madgrin:

lol. i would never put anything rock hard on my dashboard. I have a super mario mushroom plushie and thats stuck on the corner where the little window is. and i have no problems.

I have seen that done. Back in the days of 8" floppies, I remember someone leaving one for us, stuck to their filing cabinet by a big magnet.

Tom

On more than one occation, I got 5¼ floppies sent to me stapled to letters explaining the content of the disk. Usually they were stapled through the magnetic storage medium, not the paper shielding.

I have a little green dog which emits air deodoriser, he lives in the little window in front of the left side mirror. I have a growler bear in the other side, god I'm a girl!

My favorite in this department of warnings came when I worked for a pharmaceutical company. Do you remember glass drug ampules with flame sealed tips? They looked like small sharp torpedoes made from delicate crystal glass. Ours were labeled "NOT TO BE USED AS A SUPPOSITORY." I should certainly hope not.

Tom

I never thought of using an ice pick before.....what a great idea! I'll never have to clean fingerprints off the screen again! :madgrin:

"Nobody told me" is a rather common excuse for idiots.

Play stupid game, win stupid prizes.

There are probably a few people here who remember IBM cards...

Anyway, I remember a report from a university professor in the US who was supposed to receive a box of about 2000 IBM cards from another professor in Canada. The US Customs people were suspicious, so they took out a handful of the cards and sent them to Washington for analysis. Apparently the cards were deemed no threat, as the box of cards eventually was delivered, with the handful just thrown back on top of the rest of the cards. I certainly hope the cards were sequenced. In any case, we were certainly protected from the potential importation of dangerous information on IBM cards from a university in Canada.

Good story, and believable. Here is another in a similar vein:

A little ways past the Hollerith card days, but still in the days of magnetic tape, one of my engineers was traveling back to the U.S. with a small reel of computer tape. When he went through U.S. Customs he got a young agent who became very animated when he spotted the reel of tape. The young agent whisked up the tape, reeled off a section, and knowingly held it up to the light where he attempted to look through it. This guy thought he had found a stag film. I suppose he was disappointed.

Tom

So did this 'Pride' grandma get a new MFD from Toyota, or from Junkyard instead?

Given that she had been happily driving around with something sticky attached to her MFD, they probably pasted a static photo of a working MFD over her now dead unit. Problem solved and everyone is happy.

Tom