A Tuesday post from me. April Fool!
(No, this is a real post.)
After some eight years of doing the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, I've had to skip doing it this year, due to circumstances beyond my control. But I can bring back a previous tradition on my blog today.
Before I joined A to Z, I used to post an annual April Fool post.
So today, on April Fools Day, I want to talk about The Good Old Days.
April Fools Internet pranks are fun to find each year but if you think about it, enough of the top hoaxes of the last hundred years
(including the famous BBC Spaghetti Tree Harvest Documentary) predate
the Internet.
But, thanks to the Internet, I can also bring you this classic hoax from 1957.
And I can bring you another classic - the flying penguins of 2008.
It isn't just the fine folks at the BBC that can create hoaxes. We Americans got hoaxed but good on April 1 1996 when Taco Bell bought one of our great patriotic symbols - or did they?
Here are some other hoax ads.
But we used to have a lot of fun "in the old days" with April Fool's
jokes in magazines - including special TV supplements published in TV
Guide magazine. I wonder if anyone else remembers this, because I can't
find anything online about these April Fools issues except, perhaps some people selling said magazines on eBay.
Back then, before cable TV systems had online TV programming
information, and before cable TV further homogenized the weekly TV
listings, a weekly magazine called TV Guide published the listings.
They had tens of of regional editions and I loved to collect them when I went traveling. Just think of how much work this all took. I still have some of them, too.
At least twice in the early 1960's I remember the issue that would have
contained listings for April 1 having a special section, with hoax TV
shows and other non-information.
This, of course, was part of a distinguished April Fools tradition of hoax magazine articles. I just think it would be so cool if anyone else remembered what TV Guide did - and if I could even see some of those issues.
But now, in our modern world, I'll have to rely on an online site tracking the 2025 April Fools jokes.
Let me wrap up by wishing all my readers participating in A to Z a wonderful month to come.
...Happy April Fools' Day, Alana. Check this out:
ReplyDeletehttps://backroadstraveller.blogspot.com/2025/04/tuesdays-treasures-spiedie.html
The late Jimmy Buffett lived April Fool’s Day. He’d post outrageous things on his social media…
ReplyDeleteI hadn't heard the Taco Liberty Bell, that's a good one. I remember getting TV guide and loving reading through, but I don't recall the April Fools dang it!
ReplyDeleteThe only one I remember is the spaghetti harvest.
ReplyDeleteThese days, it's hard to determine which pronouncements are hoaxes and which are true. Red, white and blue land, anyone?
How funny! Happy April Fool's day.
ReplyDeleteGood one! A for April Fool's! I'll miss your A to Z, it's how we "met." April Fool's jokes used to be fun, not like the pranks of today, which seem to be any day of the year "jokes."
ReplyDeleteI never saw the April Fools articles in TV Guide. It must have been before my time.
ReplyDeleteI did this when I first start blogging.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I remember April Fool's TV or magazine ad pranks but I do remember how I would worry if a friend might tape "Kick Me" or "Stupid" on the back of my shirt where it would go unnoticed for half the day. In retrospect, a silly innocent prank compared to what some might pull today. Of these clips, I got tickled with the beer ad. That's great fun!
ReplyDelete