New York: Bogus ad campaigns, a failed prank by Google, a drug-sniffing police rabbit and an attempt at humour on the fraught presidential campaign trail competed for attention in the United States on Friday, traditionally a day of hoaxes and spoofs.
The trick on April Fools' Day is to be outlandish yet somewhat plausible.
"It gets more and more challenging to stand out," said Rachael King, spokeswoman for ThirdLove, a lingerie maker that partnered with DogVacay, a pet sitting service, to unveil a fake line of dog brassieres.
The online campaign features photographs of dogs wearing bras and gazing off into the distance.
The Amherst, New York, Police Department turned to animals of a different kind for its prank, showing an officer with an allegedly trained drug-sniffing rabbit on its Facebook page.
"Drug interdiction has become more difficult with criminals discovering ever new and smaller areas to conceal drugs," said the department, located near Niagara Falls. "'Dusty' and his handler will be able to search vehicles and other small areas with greater accuracy."
New Hampshire's Dartmouth College, which last year began using a robotic tackling dummy it called "MVP" in an effort to reduce the number of hits its players absorb during practice, said the robots would be used in games from next season.
"In the future, we'll line up 11 MVPs and they'll compete in the games for us ... Our players will execute their responsibilities by remote control," Head Football Coach Buddy Teevens said in a tongue-in-cheek video. The film showed a robot, which lacks legs and arms, failing at football drills including running stairs and catching passes.
Google, a unit of Alphabet, unveiled a feature called "Mic Drop" that ended e-mails with an image of a minion character from the "Despicable Me" animated films and prevented recipients from replying.
The company quickly turned off the feature amid online criticism from users who said it caused embarrassment in work communications.
Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas also joined in, first tweeting that rival Donald Trump accepted his one-on-one debate invite and then saying the tweet was intended as a joke.
Another prank promoted "Jobs for Babies," a new service to help the diaper set find their dream jobs, said Tierney Oakes, a spokeswoman for Beck Media & Marketing, which created video for ZipRecruiter, an online job posting service.
