It’s the day that social media managers have been waiting for, but it’s gone in a flash. Every year we see brands pretending to launch laughably niche products and unfathomable services, but like finding a needle in a haystack, some hit the mark and get that little bit of traction they’re after.

We’ve had helium beer, hand-written emails from Google Motion and Burger King’s age-old left-handed Whopper. More recently, Amazon Dash buttons were released on 1 April 2015 only to be swiftly swept aside – before we were told that no, they weren’t a joke and Jeff Bezos actually expected people to have an on-demand buttons for Gillette razors or washing powder in their homes.

This year was no different, with social feeds being clogged up with dead-pan humour and some overly-elaborate hoaxes. Here are some of the best and worst of this year’s offerings.

Builder’s best friend

In a turn of events that saw more replies asking for this to actually be invented than people laughing it off, LEGO announced the release of Find my Brick, an app that – you guessed it – allowed brick builders to find exactly the piece of plastic they’re looking for. It would seem that there are plenty of people out there who have been hoping for just this solution and were left disappointed when they realised what day it was – make it happen, LEGO, and it could be a gold mine.

 

Laziness reaches new levels

Google has done April Fools’ Day right in the past, but this year was much more of a miss than a hit. The key to a successful gag to see the month in? Believability. Although LEGO’s app was certainly out there, it doesn’t come across as inherently implausible, but Google claiming that they have an app to clean the exterior of your phone was a non-starter. Sorry, Screen Cleaner – you fooled no one.

Tuna doesn’t belong on trains

Finally, a cause we can all get behind – banning smelly food on public transport. The British Transport Police used April Fools’ to show that there is more to keep our roads and railways safe than meets the eye – what meets the nose is also of particular concern. The tweet is April Fools’ at its best – short, sweet and simple – and believe it or not, some people were genuinely fooled, while others were happy to start adding to the legislation. Smell it, say it, sorted.

No more Eurovision?

Three things Brits love: talking about the weather, tea, and the Eurovision Song Contest. As if people weren’t fed up of Brexit already, stoking the fire by reporting, albeit in jest, that we’d be kicked out of Eurovision was a bridge too far. Eagle-eyed readers would’ve spotted that the source was L’Institute de Eurovision Song, cleverly abbreviated as LIES, but it was treading a very thin line. It’s likely that we’ve annoyed the rest of Europe so much that we’ll be hearing ‘nil points’ for the foreseeable future, but it doesn’t mean you can take our Eurovision parties away from us.

Banning fun

“British April Fools’ jokes have been banned – amid warnings the public can no longer tell the difference between reality and farce.” Given what’s happened in recent years, namely the famous trio of unlikelihoods including Leicester winning the Premier League, Brexit and a reality TV star being elected to take charge of the most powerful country on the planet, the latter half of that sentence has a certain element of truth to it. Of course the publish date was 1 April, and the story went on to read that Lord Japes had enacted an archaic parliamentary order that made jokes punishable by splitting an offender’s ribs, but as every year goes by and we continue to be inundated with awfully unfunny tweets from characterless corporates, perhaps the Telegraph’s story wouldn’t go amiss ahead of 1 April 2020.

Love it or hate it… but probably hate it

Food brands have an easy way in when April rolls around; release a stomach-churning concept of a new flavour and the rest takes care of itself. Marmite was the cream of the crop this year, unveiling the concept that absolutely nobody has been waiting for, Marmite Peanut Butter. The worst bit? It wasn’t a joke at all, and this apparently edible spread is available to purchase. I’ll pass, thanks.