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Today is April 1, but much like last year, it’s been relatively quiet on the April Fools’ Day prank side of things.

Perhaps Volkswagen’s epic fail ahead of today put off brands and companies, along with the fact that we’re still battling a deadly pandemic and whatnot.

Still, there are plenty of pranks to choose from, and we’ll kick things off with Duolingo, a language-learning website and mobile app, via CNET:

…Duolingo knows people like to read on the loo, so it created the three-ply Duolingo Roll that “turns your bathroom into a classroom.”

The Roll website is a spot-on parody complete with reviews like “Keeps my language learning on a regular schedule.”

In a show of commitment to the joke, Duolingo actually produced some rolls for English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese speakers and will give them away via social media channels.

The Japanese and Spanish rolls are, at the time of writing, sold out.

It’s a goodie, but I think they’ll have to do more if they want to cut into the sacred toilet ‘Instagram scrolling and Tinder swiping’ time.

Next up, one that will certainly resonate with Millennials, who stand accused of being willing to commit war crimes to get their hands on anything avocado-related:

…you might enjoy Chosen Foods’ gag concept of GuacPaste, a guacamole toothpaste made with “hand-scooped Hass avocados.”

The package design looks like it would fit right in at Whole Foods.

Cue the Boomers weighing in with comments about how if you hadn’t been brushing your teeth with avocado paste, you could afford a house and wouldn’t have to work a second job to stay afloat.

The Guardian also has a list from Down Under, which features an announcement from the South Australia Police Force:

‼️New Dog Operations initiative announced‼️ The ‘small area urban search and guided evacuation’ dogs will be part of SAPOL’s capabilities from today🐕‍🦺https://t.co/hpVfrqiXsd pic.twitter.com/OTFulWBAbg

— South Australia Police (@SAPoliceNews) March 31, 2021

Here’s one that many tea drinkers may wish was an actual product, because who wants to hang around and jiggle the teabag?

You won’t get much pushback for saying you love tea, but coriander hasn’t earned such universal appraisal.

A what cookie, you say?

 

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A post shared by Subway Australia (@subway_australia)

Get out.

I have nothing against coriander, but I’ve seen it tear friendships apart.

IKEA threatened to enter the domain of dog fashion, releasing this advert:

You would never be able to assemble the bloody outfit anyway. That’s how IKEA works.

Shall we finish with something resembling a history lesson, so that you can wow friends and family this weekend?

Forbes has covered the history of April Fools’ Day, with the first certain English mention dating back to 1686, although there are variations of the day cropping up as far back as 1392.

The most reasonable explanation for the origin of the holiday appears to be the story that some countries adopted the Gregorian calendar earlier than others and therefore celebrated the new year on January 1 rather than March 25 under the previous calendar.

Under the old calendar, the celebration ended on April 1 after a week of revelry. The story goes that the non-French (and therefore less civilized) people who continued to celebrate the old calendar were fools and therefore called “poisson d’avril” in French vernacular which translates to “April fools” today.

Go ahead, throw around poisson d’avril on a Zoom meeting today under your breath to cuss out a co-worker.

I haven’t seen many local news sites trying their luck today, other than EWN’s story about Bafana Bafana’s new coach, but don’t ever forget that time our Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, fell for an absolute whopper.

[sources:cnet&guardian&forbes]