April Fool’s Day came and went last weekend, and companies were sure take part in the whole hijinks. Snapchat dropped a sick burn on their rivals with an Instagram filter; Google announced the Google Gnome for a smarter lawn, Honda installed Horn Emojis in their cars.
Local firms also got in on the fun… to mixed results. Foodpanda for example offered a chance to be a pampered panda (literally) in their wellness retreat ‘The Pandanctuary’ — but we all saw that April Fool’s publicity stunt a mile away. But hey, at least they weren’t as cringeworthy as Honestbee’s exotic meats store.
Though we’re pretty sure many other companies executed pranks of their own, we’d like to hone in on two cases that’ve severely rustled the jimmies of Singaporean residents who forgot that April Fool’s Day is totally a thing.
IKEA and their tablet-fueled wonderland
Why have kids running around and play with one another when they can just sit down quietly with tablets of their own? Kicking healthy, physical activity to the curb, IKEA Singapore announced their newly updated Småland playground, which features solo pods and device charging points so that children won’t have to worry about low power while their brains turn to sludge.
It’s a rather well crafted (and a clever statement about today’s digital landscape) prank — but maybe a bit too well. So much so that parents voiced their displeasure with the new playground. IKEA, however, were game to entertain all their queries:
The jig was up on April Fool’s day itself when they expressed their belief in the importance of physical play among kids:
Bandwagon and the bombshell Radiohead news
Bandwagon Asia (the country’s top publication when it comes to music news) made a lot of people’s heart skip a beat or ten when they announced that Radiohead (one of the world’s greatest bands of all time) will finally be playing right here.
Singapore, Tokyo and Taipei was said to be one of the stops in the band’s 20th anniversary of their seminal record OK Computer, with the Singapore Indoor Stadium pinpointed as the concert venue come Sept 21. You’d know it’s an elaborate prank however if you’d clicked on the links of Bandwagon’s sources (rickrolled, lol), as well as the fact that they made the heretic statement that ‘Creep’ was “their only good song”. Not to mention the fact that only true Radiohead fans know for sure that the alt-rock legends will never, ever play in Singapore (that whole thing about Thom Yorke and his Amnesty International association).
Funny it may be, but fans were really, REALLY Let Down after discovering it was all a joke. There, There, guys — one can only dream of seeing them here in our lifetimes.
“Radiohead is the best band in the world and we thought they would be the perfect topic for a good, if not brutal, April Fools prank,” explained Daniel Peters, editor of Bandwagon Asia. “We tried our best to make it sound as ridiculous as we could, but still subtle enough, so people wouldn’t fall for it easily.”
After seeing such the extreme responses from fans, the publication made sure that everyone knew it was an April Fool’s stunt. Gone off-track we might add, especially considering the amount of shares (and angry reacts) it received among their regional audience.
“I totally understood why people felt upset and offended, and the insults eventually started getting personal,” Peters mentioned in response to the overwhelming aspersions.
“I just hope when people look back at this that they’ll see it for what it is: an April Fools prank. We’ll just continue to push out quality news and feature content like we have done on every other day of the year.”
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