April Fools! Four Pranks By Companies That Went Too Far

Feeling bad? Did someone pull a prank on you today? 

April Fools has long been the haven of pranksters, jokesters, and rascals and the annual celebration is generally seen as being done in good fun. There's no better feeling than pulling a fast one on someone and announcing your intent with a roguish "April fool!" 

The tradition is observed across dozens of cultures and is known by a lot of different names, but there are times when the jokes become more than just a prank. 

Take a look at a few examples from companies that might have taken the joke too far. 

BBC's Spaghetti Trees

It's the ultimate in Fake News. 

The spaghetti tree hoax was a three-minute report that fooled a lot of people back in 1957. A program on the BBC named Panorama was a current events show that would travel to interesting places around the world to tell stories about various cultures. 

One report however, was infamous for convincing a large segment of the British population that spaghetti grew on trees. The show profiled a fictional family in Switzerland who did their carbo-loading by harvesting spaghetti from the "Spaghetti tree." 

One thing you have to remember, in the 1950's, spaghetti wasn't exactly a well-known dish for citizens in the U.K. Some Britons were unaware the pasta was just wheat flour and water. Hundreds of people flooded the BBC asking how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. The broadcast was later referred to as "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled." 

Google adds 'Drop the Mic' feature to email.

The fact that no one said "This might be a bad idea" should convince you that the folk working at Google aren't the all-knowing Silicon Valley computer overlords they like to project themselves as. 

The company attempted to have a little fun with the more than 1 billion users of its Gmail service by adding a temporary "Mic Drop" feature that added a gif of a Minion dropping a microphone. People who used the orange "Send" button to 'Mic Drop' their friends email would also have any responses to their reply automatically archived, giving you the last word (or at least the illusion of the last word).

Buuuuut, as it turns out, people couldn't tell the difference between the regular boring 'SEND' button and the Orange "Mic Drop" button and that caused all sorts of havoc - to the point where Google ended its April Fools prank at 2 p.m. At least one man claimed to have lost his job because of the feature. 

The company apologized for the new feature with Google software engineer Victorbogdan Anchidin writing, "Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year. 😟 Due to a bug, the Mic Drop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs."

Seems Google forgot people use their service for more than just a spam-junk email. 

We realize many of you use Gmail for very important messages, and we are sorry if Mic Drop was in any way harmful to you. Note that if you’re a Google Apps business, education or government user this feature was never turned on.

Google's previous 'pranks' have been kinder for users, basing them on 'Vaporware' concepts like the Gmail Motion prank that Google pulled in 2011. It seems they've learned their lesson though, and this year's 'prank' from the online search giant seems far more benign. This year, you can actually play a few rounds of 'Where's Waldo' on  Google Maps, which seems to be much safer for people.

(That is, until Waldo starts giving people directions to find Carmen SanDiego). 

Color Television and the World of Tomorrow

The true value of any prank is seeing how many people you can get at one time. In 1962, a television broadcaster in Sweden decided they'd try and fool the entire country for April Fools.

The broadcaster Svergies aired a segment with a "scientific expert" who said it was possible for people to see their broadcast in color by stretching a pair of panty hose over their black-and-white TV screens. 

Of course, that makes no sense from an engineering, or even logical perspective, but, the image of three million Swedes trying to pulled a pair of panty hose over their televisions and scratching their heads on why it didn't work is just an image everyone should have. 

Color TV shows didn't begin broadcasting in Sweden until 1970. Hopefully they had plenty of panty hose to tie them over in the meantime. 

Oreo Mint Cricket Milkshake

And then there are pranks that go so far, they become something people actually WANT. 

Wayback Burgers made a stir last year by debuting what they called a Cricket Milkshake for April Fools. Pretty funny right? Who'd want to drink a milkshake made up of creepy crawlies? 

Turns out, a lot of people. So many in fact, that Cricket flour companies (they're a thing) got in contact with the burger company to see about a possible partnership. One thing led to another, and by August, people were sipping on an Oreo Mint Cricket Milkshakes. 

(Honestly, you have to admit, using Oreo Mint is a brilliant way to camouflage the cricket part of the milkshake).