April Fools' Day
From Transformers Wiki
April Fools' Day is a human tradition observed annually on the first day of April. As the name suggests, it is a time to play practical jokes on friends and colleagues. Sometimes Transformers have even joined in the fun.
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Fiction
Earthforce
In 1990, the Dinobots decided to introduce Grimlock to the concept of April Fools' Day. To this end Slag sent him a computer-generated image of Shockwave challenging him to a duel in the middle of nowhere, knowing the Dinobot commander would be unable to resist. When Grimlock eventually stumbled across a Shockwave-shaped snowman, much to the merriment of two watching Predacons, he was not amused to say the least. As the other Dinobots tried to reassure themselves that Grimlock was bound to see the funny side, he was seen heading towards them with a large snowball. Snow Fun!
Notes
Transformers-related April Fools' Day pranks are not limited to the fiction.
- At BotCon 98, Marvel Comics editor Rob Tokar told of a joke comic script, penned by Simon Furman. The script featured the destruction of every major Transformers character, robotic sheep, a 50 foot tall nun, and Megatron accidentally stepping on a baby carriage and looking on his feet with disgust. Though the script was faxed to Hasbro on 4/1/89, Hasbro didn't review it until a few days later, so it took a little prompting before they got the gag. Hasbro's Vinnie D'Alleva would, in 2004, recount getting that script, "freaking out", and calling Tokar to complain. Tokar "could not stop laughing!" [1]
- Touted as an online preview of "Shattered Glass", "Shattered Expectations" (released on 1st April 2008) was a very well-received joke on the fandom.
- For April Fools' Day 2009, Animated art director Derrick J. Wyatt didn't pull a prank, so to speak, but rather decided to put readers of his blog to the test. He released a picture that featured numerous new Animated characters, some of which were real and would go on to appear in the third season of the cartoon, and others of which were fakes, leaving it up to observers to guess which was which. The "fakes" were Pipes, Botanica, Sunder, Flip Sides, Slapper and Chris Ho (Rodimus's vehicle mode was also in the picture, but was official, although it didn't appear in the cartoon), but they were all then made official by The AllSpark Almanac II.
- For April Fools' Day 2015, the official Transformers Facebook page announced that the then ongoing Fan Built Combiner poll was going to be canceled and replaced with the release of a Combiner Wars Reflector set. Also, K2 (the channel that airs Robots in Disguise (2015) in Italy) announced on their Facebook page the sneak preview airing of a new episode where Bumblebee changes his altmode from a car to a plane.
- For April Fools' Day 2016, the official Transformers Facebook page introduced two new factions: The Memobots and the Deskcepticons, "Office Bots" who transform into... well, office supplies. (Ironically, years later, Hasbro would revisit this same concept for real.)
- For April Fools' Day 2018, Transformers: Earth Wars announced on social media that Wheelie would be the next character added to the game. Blatant lies.
External links
- April Fools' Day at Wikipedia.
