April Fools' Day

The new site. For real.

April Fools' Day (celebrated on April 1) is a time of tomfoolery for homestarrunner.com. In early years, the prank would often replace the Index Page, giving the impression that the site had been drastically redesigned or refocused. After the site's major hiatus, April Fools' is more likely to be marked by a full toon — often joking about how long it had been since the last toon.

April Fools' Pranks

• 2003: A introduction video rebrands the site as kingoftown.com, complete with a King of Town Main Page, the game Revenge of the King, and Strong Bad Email spoof King of Townmail.
• 2004: The index page is replaced with a faux parked domain page, indicating that the homestarrunner.com URL is now held by Thorax Corporation. After a few seconds, Stinkoman emerges to reveal this is actually a new 20X6 toon: Under Construction.
• 2005: The announcement of HomestarRunner.com: PAY PLUS! informed viewers that Homestar Runner had become a subscription-based site, charging exorbitant prices for "the same content". After several pages of low-quality previews, viewers are brought back to the regular main page.
• 2006: The site is turned upside down, affecting nearly all pages.
• 2007: Although there was nothing released for April 1, Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 14.2 (released March 5) included a message from Strong Sad discussing plans for April Fools' Day pranks.
• 2009: The toon Sbemailiarized!, released March 30, had discussed how "the other cartoons" could be made into Strong Bad Emails. April Fool 09 applied this "sbemailiarization" to the index page, changing the intro into a Strong Bad email.
• 2010: The intro toon Xeriouxly Forxe announced extreme redesigns for the characters, complete with a new, matching main page.
• 2014: The index page appeared old and dilapidated before playing a toon joking about the current status of the website. This alternate index page would remain in place for roughly three months.
• 2015: sbemail 206 features Strong Bad giving Internet pranks a piece of his mind.
• 2016: Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 17.2 catches up on a full inbox (over a half-hour's worth of messages) received in the seven years since the prior series entry.
• 2018: the next april fools thing features Folly's excited pitch for an April Fools' toon — which abruptly transitions to a new Strong Bad Email partway through.
  • Folly's audio was recorded as a response to 2014's video.
• 2019: @StrongBadActual expresses a wish for "discount neural network" emails; these Discount Strong Bad Emails are provided by Janelle Shane's AI Weirdness blog.
• 2022: Strong Bad Email parenting, a reward for a Trogdor!! The Board Game Kickstarter backer, is released. A Kickstarter update specifies that, despite being announced April 1, the toon is "Not an April Fool's Joke! Just a long-forgotten cartoon that we decided to complete!"

See Also

• Halloween
• Decemberween
• Holidays