If you happened to stop by ToughPigs yesterday, you would’ve seen this lovely banner at the top of the page. The most astute Muppet fans might note its uncanny resemblance to a certain header of a certain rival Muppet fan site. And the even astuter fans among you would’ve noticed even more than that.
In honor of April Fool’s Day, we participated in a good ol’ fashioned switcheroo with our friends over at the Muppet Mindset. A lot of work went into this gag (it sure wasn’t a “trick”… methinks the internet has sullied the original mischievous intent of the holiday), and I’d like to give credit where credit’s due.
When we first started discussing the idea, we immediately reached out to ToughPigs logo artist Smig and Muppet Mindset logo artist James Carroll. Although we surprised Smig with an altered logo when ToughPigs became ToughBears on last year’s April Fool’s Day, we didn’t want to leave the original artists out of the loop this time around. To our utter delight, both Smig and James delivered some brilliant, spot-on parodies of their own work. James’ logo, of course, you can see at the top of this article. Smig’s logo for the Muppet Mindset can be seen right here:
Fantastic, right???
In addition to the new artwork, both websites posted spoofs of the other’s articles. The Muppet Mindset mocked our Ugly Toy Pageant with a “Beautiful Toy Pageant” and our My Week series with “My Week with Marilyn“. On our end, we rolled out a few Mindset-esque articles throughout the day. Those articles included:
- Weekly Muppet Wednesdays: Marty Table and Sarah Chair – A spoof of the Mindset’s “Weekly Muppet Wednesdays“, spotlighting the one-off characters from “Here is Your Life“
- The Muppet Fan’s Muppet Collection Chronicle: David Doohickey – A parody of the series of the same name, but with someone who misses the point
- News Update: April 1, 2013 – A good old fashioned news update, with some good old fashioned fake news
- The Great Muppet Survey – A Guy Who Works for Taco Bell – Spoofing “The Great Muppet Survey” with a guy who doesn’t really get the concept
- The Turkish Correspondent is Thinking About “The Muppets… Again!” – We don’t claim to understand the Mindset’s British Correspondent, so we just went ahead and poked fun at him
- Thrice Weekly Fraggle Rock Quotations: Week 547, Part 1 – Mocking the Mindset’s “Almost Daily Fraggle Rock Quotations” with the most memorable Fraggle Rock quote of all time
We want to thank Smig and James Carroll for their hard work in creating our logos, the Muppet Mindset’s Ryan Dosier for handling his half of the switcheroo, and to our readers for putting up with us all day. Click here to read about our past April Fool’s jokes!
Click here to rent that movie with Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy on the ToughPigs forum!
by Joe Hennes – Joe@ToughPigs.com
