April Fools’ Day might have less of an impact these days since every text message feels like a scam; magazine editors are being added to government war plans chats, and even our DNA is at risk. Is there anything left to joke about when real life already feels like fiction?
According to corporate America, the answer is: Yes, definitely. This year’s list of weirdness includes a Gen Z slang translator, Pickle Milk, wearable mattresses, Flat Earth travel insurance and a Duolingo five-year cruise.
Honda catnip car seats
You can’t go wrong with a cat-related April Fools’ joke. Honda’s UK division offered up catnip car seats designed to entice your feline friends into the car without all the hassle of luring them into carriers. “Using specially developed catnip-infused foam inserts, these new seats guarantee even the most car-hating cats will be keen to climb aboard,” Honda said. Cat road trips are about to get so much easier.
Bluesky reduced character count
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Bluesky’s 299-character limit is an April Fools’ joke.
Social media site Bluesky wants you to communicate more succinctly for April Fools’ Day. The company announced a reduced character count for posts — down to 299 from 300. Better sharpen your editing skills.
Cadbury On the Goo
Cadbury UK came up with creme egg ketchup packets for April Fools’ Day.
Wow, Cadbury, you really went there. The confection company known for its chocolate creme eggs unveiled condiment packages with creme-egg filling. The Instagram video is worth watching if you don’t mind seeing creme egg filling on fries (or chips if you’re in the UK or Australia).
Dbrand Touch Grass skins
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Dbrand’s touch grass skins are actually for sale.
Looks like Yahoo (see below) wasn’t the only company to turn the phrase “touch grass” into an April Fools’ product. Accessories company Dbrand rolled out grass-like covers for phones, laptops and gaming devices so you can put your fingers on some greenery without leaving your digital life behind. Here’s the twist: you can actually order these.
Duolingo world cruise
Language app Duolingo already pulled a prank earlier this year, killing off and resurrecting its owl mascot, Duo. For April Fools’, Duolingo is pretending to partner with Carnival Cruise Lines on a 5-year world cruise, stopping in 195 countries and utilizing over 40 languages. But beware — one young man forgets to keep his Duolingo streak alive and gets shot out of a vertical-drop waterslide.
Priceline “actual reality” goggles
Travel deal company Priceline teamed up with comedian Atsuko Okatsuka to introduce a different kind of a VR headset. Nothing virtual here, these “actual reality goggles” let you see right through to the real world. It’s a joke, but it’s also about encouraging people to actually get out and experience the world.
Yahoo Agricultural Interface
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“Touch grass” with the Yahoo Agricultural Interface, an April Fools’ keyboard with a soft touch.
Yahoo is celebrating April Fools’ Day with a “groundbreaking new product that will bring grassroots innovation right to your fingertips.” The Yahoo Agricultural Interface lets you “touch grass” without giving up your computer connection. It looks soft, but you had better be confident in your touch-typing skills.
ElevenLabs text-to-bark AI
At last, there’s a text-to-speech artificial intelligence engine for dogs from ElevenLabs. With text-to-bark AI, you can finally fully communicate with your dog. “Simply type a message, choose your breed and our models will convert it into fluent barking,” ElevenLabs says. Aw.
Royal Albert Hall’s immersive Nokia 3310 experience
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It’s too bad the Royal Albert Hall won’t really host a Nokia 3310 concert experience.
Venerable UK venue, the Royal Albert Hall, announced a nostalgic phone concert, saying it would host an Immersive Nokia 3310 Experience. “The event, which hopes to tap into the current wave of noughties nostalgia, will include performances of classic ringtones and alarms by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, live-streamed gaming and a special performance by organist Anna Lapwood,” the hall announced for its April Fools’ prank.
Natural Grocers savory spritzers
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Mmm, mac and cheese fizzy water. Natural Grocers came up with some funky flavors for April Fools’ Day.
A lot of people enjoy a nice refreshing fizzy water, usually with a fruity or citrusy flavor. Grocery chain Natural Grocers took things in a funky direction with its fictional savory spritzers. The joke flavors include clam water, mac and cheese water, raw onion water and roasted chicken water. If I had to drink one, I guess I’d reluctantly try the mac and cheese flavor.
William Shatner heads to Mars
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William Shatner jokes about becoming an interplanetary citizen.
Star Trek’s Captain Kirk took to X to tease his fans with a post saying he’s going to catch a SpaceX ship to Mars. “After deep reflection and discussions with my family, I have made the life-changing decision to leave behind my career and my home planet to embark on this historic mission,” Wililam Shatner wrote. He shared a photo of himself and Elon Musk in spacesuits and suggested a Shatner City on Mars “would be great.”
Coffee-infused black beans
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Eight O’Clock Coffee makes a bean connection with coffee-infused black beans.
Companies love to come up with raunchy flavor combinations for their fictional April Fools’ Day food pranks. Coffee company Eight O’Clock made a seemingly logical connection between coffee beans and black beans to invent a taste sensation no one asked for: coffee-infused black beans. Hey, it’s all just beans, right?
Olipop Hidden Valley Ranch soda
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Yum. Olipop and Hidden Valley Ranch dressing come together at last in an April Fools’ soda.
Olipop is a soda that comes in plenty of regular soda flavors, but for April 1, the company’s joke is that they’ve teamed up with Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing to release a Ranch Lovers Pack. Imagine quenching your thirst with ranch soda, jalapeno ranch soda, garlic ranch soda and hot honey ranch soda.
Ariat New Boot Goofin’
Here’s one for Reno 911 fans. Boot company Ariat brought in Lt. Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon) as its new boot spokesmodel. Dangle has a few demands, including Chappell Roan tickets, sandwiches and $70. The result is a funny video involving Lennon’s in-character hijinks and a lot of boots.
Logitech G Pro X 10
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Logitech went minimalist for its April Fools’ joke.
How many keys do you really need on your keyboard? The Logitech G Pro X 10 keyboard for April Fools’ Day is described as having “the most efficient design, for the most efficient gamers.”
Pizza-making toolbox
Tool and tool storage company Sonic revealed its Next toolbox PZA edition, a combination toolbox and pizza oven. “Sonic’s unique design combines our innovative storage space and foam inlays with a powerful pizza oven — brought together in one stylish and delicious solution,” Sonic joked.
Red Lobster cheddphones
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Slap these bad boys on your ears for some steaming hi-fi biscuits.
How about steaming Red Lobster Cheddar Bay biscuits for your ears? That’s the idea behind the restaurant’s cheddphones. Hungry Red Lobster fans can mention Cheddphones at any location on April Fools’ and get some real biscuits for free.
Pickle milk
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Le Pickle Club and Mooala joined up to invent the concept of pickle milk, a celebration of pickleball and alternative milks.
Here’s two words that shouldn’t go together: pickle and milk. Pickleball clothing company Le Pickle Club teamed up with dairy-free beverage company Mooala to prank us with Pickle milk, a stomach-turning, drinkable, fermented-cucumber concept. No, thank you.
Alien lawn circles
Here’s one for the sci-fi crowd. Outdoor power products company Husqvarna joked about mysterious circles appearing in lawns like alien-conspiracy crop circles. The April Fools’ reveal connects the circles to Husqvarna’s new residential robotic lawn mowers. Sigh. It’s never really aliens.
Flat Earth travel insurance
“This sign is flat — the Earth is not!” said one sign during the Silicon Valley March for Science in 2017.
Insurance comparison service Insuranceopedia unveiled Flat Earth travel insurance, describing it as a “policy created exclusively for travelers who believe the Earth is flat — and who plan to explore every glorious, uncurved inch of it.” The joke coverage addresses potential travel issues like falling off the edge of the Earth, loss of gravity, UFO detainment and rescue from the rogue sea turtles supporting the Earth’s underside. Better safe than sorry.
7-Eleven mystery doughnut
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What flavor is 7-Eleven’s 2025 mystery doughnut? No one is sure.
For 7-Eleven, the whole month is worthy of a sweet April Fools’ celebration. The convenience store chain unveiled its 2025 mystery doughnut, a Bismark-style confection. But 7-Eleven won’t tell you what flavor it is. Good luck figuring it out. Some doughnut fans on social media have already taken a bite and the best they can come up with is that it’s vaguely lemony.
Cat poo scented candle
The candle is real, but it only pretends to smell like cat poo, and instead smells of roses.
Cat owners love their feline friends, but not this much. Whisker, the maker of Litter-Robot automatic litter boxes, pretends to be offering a very, uh, special candle with the purchase of one of its boxes. Called Cat Pu/No. 2, it’s described as “a composition of all-natural notes,” with the company saying that “each and every CAT PÙ / NO. 2 is organically cat-crafted in-houses daily (sometimes multiple times a day) in very small batches.” The relevance? Because Litter Robot supposedly keeps your house smelling so good, “this scent may be lost forever.” The funny thing is, it’s kind of real — anyone who buys a Litter-Robot on April 1 will get the candle — but it actually has a rose scent.
Egg someone’s house with… chocolate eggs
Reese’s and Cadbury want to give “egging your house” a whole new meaning.
Maybe you’ve had your house egged in the past and had to deal with the mess of cleaning it up. An April Fools’ prank from candy companies Reese’s and Cadbury is that people should instead start a new tradition by “egging” friends and family with the confectioners’ tasty eggs. Thankfully, you don’t hurl them at your friend’s house, you just give your pal a surprise of candy eggs, and leave a sign or note saying, “You’ve been egged.” This might be the tastiest April Fools’ prank of the year, and anyone who wants to egg my house in this way is more than welcome.
The Odd Company City Napper
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Snooze on the bus with The Odd Company’s City Napper, a comfy April Fools’ joke.
UK mattress and bedding retailer The Odd Company wants you to get cozy on your morning commute with the City Napper. The wearable mattress comes with a wraparound headrest and quilted poncho for crashing out during your next trip on public transit. Actually, it looks really comfortable. Too bad it’s not a real product.
Razer Skibidi headset
When you need to understand a Gen Z video-game player, get the Razer Skibidi headset to translate their slang.
“Skibidi toilet” is one of those bizarre expressions associated with Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and those generations play a lot of video games. So Razer’s April Fools’ Day prank is something called a Razer Skibidi headset, which it calls the world’s first AI-powered “brainrot translator” headset. It translates phrases thrown out by young gamers such as, “What the sigma? We’re getting mobbed,” which means, “Your team needs support.” And it translates, “I think you’re cute” to become “ni hao fine shyt.”
Bodyarmor Sports Performance Shampoo
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Give your hockey hair a wash with Bodyarmor Sports Performance Shampoo.
Sports drink company Bodyarmor decided to get into the hair business with a Sports Performance Shampoo packed with electrolytes and vitamins.
The shampoo is a tie-in with the NHL and the legendary locks (often mullets) sported by hockey players. It’s not all a joke. The prank leads to a real sweepstakes where a fan can win tickets to the Stanley Cup finals. Just don’t drink the faux shampoo.
How to avioid being an April Fool
Check URLs
You’re probably always carrying a little healthy skepticism these days, but turn up the disbelief until April 1 has passed. There’s a famous journalism cliche: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. If you see a news report that looks… well, weirder than usual, verify that it’s from a legit site. Check the URL. The New York Times doesn’t misspell its own name in its URL, but joke sites may pick a very similarly named web address to try to trick you.
Consider the calendar
And as for those loopy prank products, be aware that companies sometimes throw a lot of time into their jokes. There may even be videos or order sites that tie in to the gags. If a company picks April Fools’ Day, or the days leading up to it, to release or announce a product that sounds too odd to be true, don’t be quick to believe in the offering.
Do some searching
Fact-check anything that looks suspicious — especially before spending any money. Make sure you’re on the company’s own site, for one thing. Google the name of the product, or information about the item, to see if anyone has called out the product as a prank. Usually, fake products will offer a page to click to, and that page may simply say APRIL FOOL.
Don’t believe Facebook friends, either
Don’t fall for an April Fools’ prank from a random trickster, even if your Facebook friend Lisa swears it’s true. It’s easy to spread falsehoods and misinformation on Reddit, Facebook, X, TikTok or Instagram, where everyone is a publisher and not everyone can be trusted.
Stacking up 2024 April Fools’ Day
Last year’s April Fools’ Day pranks from companies included:
- Duolingo on Ice
- Scotch whisky from the makers of Scotch tape
- Hot-sauce flavored Tic Tacs
- Flying J truck stop–scented cologne
- Sour cream and onion Olipop soda
- A “Rainforest Cafe” atop the Empire State Building, and perhaps the funniest (and grossest):
- 7-Eleven’s hot dog water–flavored sparkling water (they really made some cans of it, too)
