If you stopped by ToughPigs on April 1st, you were likely bamboozled by our little ploy. As we do every year, we poked fun at the Muppets for April Fools Day. This year, we professed a little frustration at the lack of Muppet merch by creating some of our own. A lot of our own. Maybe too much of our own.
Yes, we made up some fake merchandise from the Disney-owned Muppets, Sesame Street, The Jim Henson Company, and even ToughPigs. From bearskin rugs to radish cars to replicas nobody asked for, we had it all. Also for some reason, a whole bunch of rocks.
Don’t quote me, but I’m pretty sure this April Fools Day gag featured more rocks than any other year.
Many thanks to the entire ToughPigs team for coming together to brainstorm and create these ideas and their corresponding descriptions. Cheers to Matthew Soberman, Katilyn Miller, Shane Keating, and myself, Joe Hennes.
In case you didn’t see our fake articles yesterday, they’ve been preserved in amber so you can read them all at the links below! Enjoy!
First up, we shared some dream Muppet merchandise, including the Swedish Chef “Borkinator,” Doc Hopper’s Vegetarian Frog Legs, and a Fleet Scribbler action figure. The one we were (slightly) surprised to see get a lot of interest was the Fozzie Bearskin Rug. Let’s be honest, we’d all buy that one.
Click here to read about all of the fake Muppet merch!
Our batch of Sesame Street merchandise included pre-chewed Cookie Monster cookies, a replica of Oscar the Grouch’s trash can, and The Letter J. My favorite is the set of Teeny Little Super Guy shot glasses, which make sense until you remember that he’s a preschool character on a product certainly not made for preschoolers.
Click here to read about all of the fake Sesame merch!
The Jim Henson Company gave us a lot to work with, covering a lot more bases in terms of franchises to poke fun at. We teased a pre-holed Emmet Otter washtub, a dubious-looking “Essence of Gelfling,” and Jim Henson brand elephant paint. Easily the best was the life-sized replica of Red Fraggle’s radish car, and I’ll be forever sad that it isn’t real.
Click here to read about all of the fake Henson merch!
Finally, we wrapped things up with a bunch of fake merchandise from your pals here at ToughPigs. We offered up membership in the Mr. Curly Twirly Fan Club, “The Complete ToughPigs” print edition, and an obnoxiously long (and hard to read) t-shirt for the nerdiest of Muppet fans. We’ve been told that “Hubba-Wha?! The Home Game” should be real, and honestly, we couldn’t agree more.
Click here to read about all of the fake ToughPigs merch!
And that’s a wrap on another April Fools Day from ToughPigs! Thanks for joining us, and we hope the next year will be filled with radish cars and weird replicas and cookie crumbs and… you know what? We’ll take anything these folks want to sell us.
Click here to haggle down to a lower price for the ToughPigs Discord!
by Joe Hennes – Joe@ToughPigs.com
