April Fools' Day 2014: The Best of the Brand Hoaxes

Happy April Fools' Day! This year, all the usual brand suspects are joined by a host of tech companies and startups in trying to throw you for a loop—a near impossibility these days. And in an odd move, American Eagle Outfitters pranked us an entire week early. Stay tuned. We'll be updating this list throughout the day. UPDATE (4:37 p.m. ET): Here are still more. Scroll down to see the earlier ones. • Lego The toy brand is delivering its new Ninja Turtles set via live turtles. • Honda The automaker creates the world's first DIY car. • Sam Adams The brewer releases HeliYum, the world's first helium-carbonated beer. • Lil BUB The celebrity cat introduces her twin. • Moshi The computer accessory maker has invented MouseBolt, the first live-mouse-based charger. • House of Cards The Netflix show gave everyone a sneak peak of Season 3 with a script page on Facebook. • Netflix Watch Bacon sizzle with Netflix's new original series, Sizzling Bacon. If it's half as popular as Fireplace for Your Home, they've got a winner: UPDATE (2:59 p.m. ET): Here are a bunch more. Scroll down to see the earlier ones. • Bonobos The apparel company created TechStyle—wearable tech-clothing that connects you socially to a psychopathic artificial intelligence. • Denny's In a surprising, press-getting twist, the restaurant opted out of April Fools' Day altogether. Prank idea: don't. — Denny's (@DennysDiner) April 1, 2014 • WestJet The airline is converting to "metric time" to be even more Canadian. • RedBox The DVD rental company created Mood Match, which lets you auto-match your movie selection to your mood. Dissapointed that it's fake? Get 50 cents off today with the code Aprilfools. • Saatchi & Saatchi Thailand Ad agency creates an app to help clients fire their agency. • Samsung and HTC Both brands have made fake wearable tech gloves. HTC won this battle. • American Well The telehealth firm has introduced Puppy Connect, which lets you connect to puppies to improve your health. Aww, puppies. • CERN The Large Hadron Collider is switching to exclusively using Comic Sans font and is adding a Justin Bieber selfie to its logo. • Vegemite The Australian food paste has created its first energy drink. iDrink 2.0 comes in one flavor: Vegemite. • Google Chrome The browser wants to translate everything to Emoiji. Turn it on for your browser, and it will work only for today. • Google Chromecast The streaming device announces a new era of entertainment populated entirely by squirrels. • Twitter The Twitter helmet will allow you to tweet with a simple pecking head motion. What, we don't even get an illustration of this? • Toshiba In our third wearable tech glove prank of the day, Toshiba introduces DiGiT. • Tumblr Tumblr has launched Tumblr pro, a new service that puts top hats on everything. Be sure to watch the amazing, inspiring video. • Microsoft Clippy, the helpful paperclip, has returned to his reign of terror on Office.com. • Captain Morgan Hopefully this Taco Rum is fake, although Chrissy Teigen says she's not opposed. The original list is below: • Google Linked off the Google homepage this morning is the Auto Awesome Photobombs app for Google+, which lets you insert David Hasselhoff into any photo. • American Eagle Outfitters Charging out of the gates last week, American Eagle announced American Beagle Outfitters, a new clothing line for dogs, complete with a dogumentary. • Cheetos Spokescheetah Chester released his new fragrance, Cheeteau. They took it a step further by actually making a few bottles of the stuff, and sent one to AdFreak. It reeks, and not in a good way. In New York City today? Try it yourself on Madison Avenue between 59th and 61st Streets. • YouTube The video site announces the absurd viral trends for the rest of the year. • Reddit "Headdit" lets you navigate Reddit with your head. Includes special cat mode. • Airbnb Now you can rent out other people's office desks. • Sony Tired of plugging your gadgets into wall sockets? Sony has invented Sony Power Food, which can power both you and your devices. Weird. • BetaBrand Introducing Adult Adult Undergarments. They'll make her pants as wet as yours. • Publicis Seattle The agency has created Brand Drops, the world's first branded aromatic rain. They turn a rainy day into the ultimate out-of-home, multisensory brand experience. • Qless This startup has created Line Ringer, an app that scans for the cellphone numbers of the people ahead of you in line and calls them with fake emergencies that force them to sacrifice their place. I wish it was real. • Fresh Direct The food-delivery company is offering eagle-caught salmon sustainably harvested in the wilds of upstate New York. • Google Maps Compete to become the world's best Pokémon master and win a job at Google Maps. OK, the job doesn't exist, but you can download the app and find the missing Pokémon. • Gmail Google's mail app has created "sharable selfie" themes for your Gmail inbox—or as they're calling them, Shelfies. And … they're claiming they invented the term "selfie." Again, it's not fully a joke, as you can now set your Gmail box to show other people's Shelfies. • Orbotix Speaking of selfies, Orbotix, maker of the Sphero ball toy, has invented a tiny hovering drone called the selfie bot, so you can take selfies every second of the day. • Google Japan Check out the Magic Hand, a joystick that replaces your hand with a robotic hand. Just another example of Chindogu. • Nest The home automation company teams with Virgin America to create Total Temperature Control for every seat on Virgin, introduced by Tony Fadell and Sir Richard Branson. • Virgin Active The Smarty Pants are underwear with a built-in meter to count your every glute flex and ensure your rump is in tip-top twerking shape. • Waze How do I love thee? Count the ways with new WazeDates. Because honking only takes you so far. • National Geographic Channel The channel will be running some of its classic programs with new audio courtesy of RiffTrax. This will probably seem more prank-like if you're flipping through and have no clue why the honeybadger is mouthing off again. • The Pirate Bay A special device will embrace your entire mind and upload Pirate Bay's content directly into your brain. • Ely, Minnesota The April Fools'-loving city is launching The Ely Channel, featuring great TLC-inspired shows like Sauna Wars, The Real Housewives of St. Louis County and Iron Range Chef. • BMW Introducing the Ultimate Sleeping Machine. BMW is old hat at this, so hats off for another super cute prank. • Dominos U.K. The world's first edible pizza box. Also, ewww. • Samsung Mobile U.K. How to bring free WiFi to all of London. With Fli-Fy, powered by the city's pigeons. • Caribou Coffee Check out Caribou Clear, the world's first clear coffee. • Tropicana It's a day for lots of fake new food flavors and varieties. Like Tropicana's All Pulp. • BirchBox An app update auto-identifies the makeup someone is wearing. • Chegg The academic company has created Chegg U., with groundbreaking courses in Advanced Flip Cup, Microwavable Culinary Arts and Mastering the Selfie. • Think Geek The nerd site tests a gamut of new products on April Fools' Day each year. Among this year's creations: the NERF Nuke, the Keurig Mr. Beard Instant Beard Machine, the Flux Capacitor Car Charger, the USS Enterprise Flying Disk, the DarkMange LED Spellcasting Staff, a laser-guided necktie and the Das Can-in-Stein. • JetBlue In an anti-prank, JetBlue is again giving free fares to people whose birthdays are April 1. • CafePress The site has launched CafePredict. In conjunction with the NSA, it'll ship you items before you order them. • Reyka Vodka A lava rock drinking-water filter. • Chili's The restaurant chain has put everything you love about Chili's in an ice cream. Try Nacho Queso Crunch, Baby Back Chunk and Buffalo Brownie Sundae. Because there's a pregnant lady somewhere. • Life at Google Try out Google Resume Auto-Awesome (actually not that awesome). • Rosetta Stone The language software company now lets you Learn to Speak Klingon. It's another product some people would actually buy. Plus, they got Worf himself, Michael Dorn, to star in the video. • Spaghetti O's Now they're Spaghetti Squares.

AdFreak

April Fools' Day 2014: The Best of the Brand Hoaxes

A working list of this year's fun pranks

Rebecca Cullers

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Rebecca Cullers