Neopia's April Fools Jokes Throughout the Years

April 1st, 2001 -

This is when the tradition of Neopia-wide April Fool's Jokes began. Every Neopian logged on the morning of April 1st to see some very strange looking pets! All pets were presented with new designs that had awkward body parts or something oh too strange going on and these designs were passed off as "new and upcoming designs" for the Neopets as an April Fool's Joke.

April 1st, 2002 -

The second year of jokes provided quite the scare in Neopia. I remember waking up and logging onto Neopets to find everything in my inventory and safety deposit box gone at the supposed hands of the Pant Devil. TNT suceeded in being able to cause an uproar in users that had no idea what was going on, and it was later revealed in the news to be one big hoax and all items were returned to the users safely and all was well... well, except for the Pant Devil, who got nothing out of the deal.

April 1st, 2003 -

For April Fool's Day 2003, a brand new version of Neopets was announced that was presented as being rad and totally cool, called "Neopetz!!". TNT claimed that they had eliminated the use of neopoints and that everything in the shops would be free to the users. They also introduced Neopians all across the world to a little mascot called "Nick Neopia", who was supposed to act as a tour guide around the new website. Unfortunately to those Neopians who were gullible and fell for the joke and began dreaming of all of the things they could have in the Hidden Tower for free, this was revealed to be a joke and everything went back to normal.

April 1st, 2004 -

TNT really went all out on April Fool's Day in 2004 and introduced us to the new trading card game that was going to be the next big thing, and what was it called? Anyone who was on Neopets in 2004 remembers this name by heart: the Quigiki Armageddon. The whole day's news was centered on Quiggle-featured new things: new buddy icons, how to draw new Quigiki characters, and sneak peeks at the new Quigiki trading cards. This was the first year that a now annual avatar was released the Quigiki April Fool's avatar! It can now be gotten every year by visiting the news page on April 1st.

April 1st, 2005 -

The news on April 1st, 2005 featured over 50 new pets that were supposedly going to be released in the future. Many of them were very cute and had Neopians going crazy over the prospect of a new cute pet, and in the end after the hoax a poll was put up so that Neopians could vote on their favorite new pet. A fun fact is that the winner of this poll was the "Llamameeah", which was later debuted as what we all now know and love: the Gnorbu!

April 1st, 2006 -

The joke on April 1st had everyone owing neopoints to even see what was going on, or so that was what everyone was led to believe. For every page load on the Neopets website, you were charged a neopoint total of anywhere from 3 to 75 neopoints! This bill accumulated as "NeoCharge" and if you were on Neopets on April 1st, 2005, you had a little pop up window informing you of how much you owed in a total NeoCharge. This resulted in fun competitions on the Neoboards as everyone tried to see how much they could tally up, and as much as TNT tried to make this idea believable, at the end of April Fool's Day it was taken down and nobody owed any NeoCharge whatsoever.

April 1st, 2007 -

April Fool's Day of 2007 had every Battledomer in an uproar. Neopets claimed that they were "forced" to take down the Battledome and along with it, every Battledome-related shop and the Battledome Neoboard. People who were gullible enough went as far as threatening to quit if the Battledome was not reinstated and at the end of the day, all Battledome-related ventures resumed as per normal with no harm done!

April 1st, 2008 -

On April 1st, 2008 every Neopian logged onto Neopets to be greeted by the "newest Neopets installment", 'Neobuddies'! When you logged onto Neopets, you were prompted with a pop-up of one of a number of Neopian characters that explained that you were chosen to test out the new "Neobuddies Beta System". This pop-up would continuously appear until you caved in and agreed to take a questionnaire. The questionnaire was made to supposedly test your personality type and pair you with the best possibly Neobuddy for your personality. However, despite the questionnaire, most Neopians ended up with good old Bug Eyes McGee and had his face popping up on their screen throughout the day.

April 1st, 2009 -

April 1st, 2009 was the year of two very complex jokes. The first of which was Neoplants! Upon logging into the website on April 1st, 2009, everyone had their site theme changed to the "Neopets Green" theme. Logging in meant you were greeted with a pop-up introducing you to the new "Plantopia" and clicking on that pop-up brought the user to a page that outlined all of the new and upcoming things that Neopets could look forward to with the upcoming arrival of Neoplants. This went as far as to include the world map, which had a flowery border around it and read "Coming Soon: Plantopia" at the top! There was even a Neoboard created to talk about the new and upcoming Neoplants.

However, alongside this harmless "green" joke, the Neopian economy seemed to be crashing on this day as well. Fyora was forced to shut down the Hidden Tower, the Bank Manager suffered economic loss and interest rates were supposedly decreased by 1% depending on your bank account. The Tombola Man needed donations and could not run The Tombola, and every shop in Neopia increased their inflation rates to 23.10%. The stock market followed by crashing and everyone's stocks only plummeted in one direction April 1st, 2009: and that was down.

April 1st, 2010 -

2010 sported another two-part prank year!

The first part featured news of an upcoming "3D Battledome" and videos were provided so that users could see what it would look like.

The second part turned out to be very fun for Neopians across the world; users were given a chance to prank their neofriends. What could be better than that, right? There were four types of pranks available: changing one of their pets into a pile of soot, having one of their pets turn into a "random" color and species, throwing a pie in one of their pets' faces, or sliming one of their pets. Filter words were put up on the Neoboards as well so that if anyone tried to give away their prank too soon, TNT made it so that words like "prank" and "slime" were filtered to change into something else.

April 1st, 2011 -

A pandemic swept through Neopia on the morning of April 1st 2011. Infections became visible on pets (save for unconverted Neopets). This infection was defined as the "Scourgies" and when you went to the hospital, you were greeted with both a countdown clock and the number of pets infected across Neopets. Thankfully, a number of cures were made available by the hospital, but your pet could only be cured by someone else! You could cure anyone else's pet, and anyone else could cure your pet through a number of options. Those options were Blazingly Hot Soup, Freezing Cold Ice Pack, Haphazardly Placed Splints, Indistinguishable Healing Goop, and Magical Healing Slorgs. But these weren't just one use cures and then your pet was cured and all was well... no, no! Whatever cure your pet was given would show up visibly on their body instead of the Scourgies and a half hour later, your cure would wear off and your pet would be back to having the Scourgies and you'd need to find a cure all over again. On April 2nd, 2011 all was well again and pets could finally be free of their Scourgies for good by going into the customisation and saving an outfit. However, it was certainly a lot of fun to see everyone on the Neoboards so eager to help cure others pets!

There you have it, a look back on the past eleven years of Neopets pranks and jokes inspired by the festivity of April Fool's Day. Of course April 1st, 2012, is right around the corner and who knows what waits for us then and in future years...