Pranks (part 2)

April Fools Day will be with us in a few days time, so to prepare everyone, this week the Charles Fudgemuffin blog features a round-up of silly pranks.

1) Before I get started though, if any blog masters are reading this, then if you keep reading I'll tell you how to trick your readers into thinking there's a hair on their screen.

Editor's note: "Charles, you forgot to include the advice on how to trick their readers. Also, have you got any advice on how I can get a hair off my screen. It seems to be well and truly stuck."

Charles: **chortle** "A hair on your screen, you say? No, sorry. I don't know how you would get a hair off your screen." **snicker**

Prank ideas for April Fools Day

It's April Fools Day in a few days' time, so if you're looking for inspiration for pranks, here are a few ideas...

1) Hot stuff!

Anyone want to try an Egyptian strawberry?

"Try one. They're great!"

April Fools Day pranks (2021 edition)

Devious deception for the purposes of spreading misery and evil are definitely bad, and should always be frowned upon.

However, good natured pranks which the recipient finds amusing are a nice way to bring more smiles into the world. Here are a few pranks from this year's April Fool's Day...

1) Mashed Potato flavour ice cream

Mash Direct started the day by announcing an exciting new mashed potato flavour ice cream! Perhaps even more disgusting was their carrot and parsnip flavoured ice cream, and to complete the disgustingness they also revealed their new gravy topping! Gravy on ice cream? I don't think that's going to catch on.

It all sounds absolutely minging, but thankfully it wasn't real, and it was purely an April Fools Day prank.

Mashed potato flavoured ice cream ... mmm!

Get it while it's warm!

April Fools Day pranks (2019 edition)

Last week saw another April Fools Day come and go, so as has become something of a tradition on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog, this week's blog post features a round-up of various April Fools Day pranks from various companies, people and organisations.

However, to test your powers at detecting prankery, one of the following 'pranks' is actually real and not a prank at all! It should be fairy obvious, but if you can't work it out, the answer is revealed at the bottom of today's blog post...

1) McDonalds Pickle Burger

I'm Gherkin It

Personally, I find the gherkins in Big Macs absolutely disgusting, but apparently there are some people who love them, so they must have been really excited when McDonalds Australia posted the following announcement on their instagram page:

"Pickle lovers, it’s the news you’ve all been waiting for. We’re super stoked* to announce the launch of our brand new McPickle Burger. It’s time to tuck into juicy, flavoursome pickles layered between melted cheese, ketchup sauce and toasted sesame seed buns. It’s sure to be a treat for all your senses."

* 'Stoked' is an Australian word for excited.

The announcement was accompanied by an image of a Big Mac style burger filled with gherkins instead of burgers!

However, gherkin lovers hopes were dashed when they discovered that sadly for them, it was an April McFool!

Life is like a box of chocolates

Surely nobody throws away ice cream!
That would be extremely foolish!

A recent study found that the UK throws away an incredible £13 billion worth of food every year! There are just over 63 million people living in the UK, so that works out at £205.75 wasted per person. Just think of what you could buy with £200! You could buy every book and short story ever published by Charles Fudgemuffin, and still have over £150 left over!

Anyway, it got me thinking how important it is not to waste food, and I remembered this lesson when I recently received a box of chocolates as a thank you gift for a small favour I did for a friend. Although I appreciated the gesture, unfortunately I suffer from a chocolate allergy, so I was unable to enjoy the chocolates. I didn't want to appear ungrateful though, so I accepted the gift, and rather than throw the chocolates away, I decided instead to take them into work and leave them in the canteen with a message for people to help themselves.

April Fools' Day pranks (2017 edition)

It's that time of year where I round up a selection of some of the April Fools' Day jokes that were found on the internet to celebrate April Fool's Day last week.

1) Russian hacking services

The award for the most unexpected April Fool's Day prank had to go to the Russian Foreign Ministry who posted their apparently updated answering machine message on their facebook page. The message advises callers:

As unbelievable as it seems,
facebook deleted the link,
but you can still read the transcript.

"You have reached the Russian embassy. Your call is very important to us. To arrange a call from a Russian diplomat to your political opponents, press 1. To use the services of Russian hackers, press 2. To request election interference press 3 and wait until the next election campaign."

For legal purposes, they add:

"Please note that all calls are recorded for quality improvement and training purposes."

You can listen to the prank answering machine message below:

Update: Sadly, in an extremely uncharacteristic move ** shifty eyes**, facebook have now deleted the prank answering machine message, so unfortunately you can't listen to it anymore. I'm afraid you'll just have to take my word for it!

April Fools Day pranks (2016 edition)

A selection of spoofs and tricks from April Fools' Day...

As usual, with yesterday being April Fools' Day, the internet was full of fake stories. Here are just a few of them...

1) Japanese keyboards

Kids born in English speaking countries are lucky that we only have 26 letters to learn.  However, in Japan there are about 50,000 kanji characters, and between 2,000 to 3,000 of these are in common use! So as you can imagine learning to type in Japanese must be quite a task, as you can see by this Japanese keyboard...

7 April Fools' Day pranks (2015 edition)

A few of this year's spoof April Fool's Day stories...

Last week I featured a spoof story involving a petty politician, and this week the internet was full of spoof stories, as Wednesday was April Fool's Day. Here are some of the April Fool's Day pranks that various companies, organisations and websites posted on the internet...

1) CATNAV

"Anything dogs can do, cats can do better..."

First up is an interesting new scheme launched by the Royal National Institute Of Blind People ... CATNAV! RNIB help many blind and partially sighted people with their trained guide dogs, and they now plan to expand by training cats to act as 'guide cats'.

An early pilot of the scheme suggests that CATNAV will be ideal for any blind or partially sighted people who want to climb trees or hide under cars.

RNIB introduces CATNAV

If you think our politicians are bad...

...then consider yourself lucky you don't live on the island Geojis Seom!

Drivers of red cars got on the wrong side
of Sijang Sasohan, Mayor of Geojis Seom.

It seems that nowadays politicians are forever in the news for things like false expenses claims, treason, and other assorted inappropriate behaviour, but they don't generally stoop to the level of childish pettiness shown by one politician who didn't take too kindly to a light-hearted newspaper report poking fun at him.

The mayor of Geojis Seom* has made the news before (admittedly, more so in Asia than in the rest of the world) due to some of his strange decisions as leader of the island prinicipality, but his most recent behaviour has to be his most petty decision yet.

* The disputed island territory a few hundred miles north east of Korea which several countries lay claim to.

Sijang got notably upset earlier this year at an official government press conference when he launched a tirade of abuse against the daily newspaper Jalang Simin (Proud Citizen). Jalang Simin published a light-hearted report mocking drivers of green cars, and as Sijang himself drives a green car it seems he didn't take too kindly to the article. In a subsequent fit of rage, Sijang tracked down the perhaps ill-advised journalist who wrote the article, discovered he drove a red car and then quickly introduced a new law giving green cars priority over red cars on all public roads.

7 April Fools' Day pranks (2014 edition)

A few of the spoof stories and pranks found on the web on April Fools' Day.

Last year I rounded up some of the best online pranks played by various websites on April Fool's Day and as you'd expect there were plenty of spoofs this year as well, so here are a few of my favourites...

1) Scientists baffled by square eggs

Traditional 'egg' shaped eggs could become
a thing of the past according to 'April Fuller'.

Freedom Food Farms were reporting that one of their farms had become the first in the world to rear chickens that can lay square eggs! Egg distribution company Hammond Eggs are already looking into the benefits of the square egg, with an obvious bonus being that eggs will now be easier to stack, and of course the square shape means that making sliced egg sandwiches will be more convenient from now on.

However, eagle eyed viewers may be able to spot a couple of 'April Fool' clues in the promotional video, such as square eggs being available in shops from April 1st, and also a more subtle clue is the name of the Hammond Eggs spokeswoman ... April Fuller.

You can watch the full video at the following link:
Chickens lay square eggs (Sadly, Hammond Eggs's April Fools Day video is no longer available.)

7 online spoofs from April Fools Day (2013 edition)

Every year more and more websites and companies seem to be getting into the April Fools' Day spirit by posting spoof stories on their websites, and as I'm a big fan of pranks I thought I would round-up some of this year's April Fools' Day stories.

A step by step guide on how to boil water.

1) How to make boiling water

I'll start off with a video found on the allrecipes.com website which teaches budding chefs how to make hot boiling water. It's quite a daft video, but the voice-over catches the style of 'How To Cook' instructional videos perfectly, so even if you're a complete amateur when it comes to cooking you should be able to follow their step by step instructions and make your own 'hot boiling water'.

As one All Recipes member comments, "What a simple recipe! I'm always looking for something quick and easy after work, and this is just perfect!"

(Update: Sadly, the video is no longer available, but I'm pretty sure everyone knows how to boil water anyway ... even without the instructional video!)

2) YouTube announce a winner

One of the most famous April Fools' Day spoofs this year was the 'YouTube select a winner' prank whereby YouTube announced that for the last ten years YouTube has actually just been one big competition to find the best uploaded video. After ten years they were finally bringing the competition to a close and were finally ready to announce a winner. As the competition was now over the YouTube website would no longer be necessary and therefore they would subsequently be closing YouTube down.

You can watch YouTube's announcement at the link below:
YouTube ready to choose a winner