Since 2001, the company has posted a series of
gag products on its site, everything from the World’s Largest Remote
Control Car, a standard-sized car with its own toy-like remote, to a
Monolith Action Figure a la Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, a rectangular
black “figurine” of the shapeless villain with absolutely no moving parts.
The joke? None of the products actually exist at least initially.
Once customers click on the prices, they find themselves on an April
Fool’s Day page, a punch-line the company won’t ever tire of. Nor
should they. In 2010, ThinkGeek did $76 million in sales, a 55% jump
from 2009’s $49 million and up from just $19 million in 2005. Year
round, the site pumps out tangible products like t-shirts with built-in playable instruments
and retro gear for your electronics like an attachable iPad joystick
or a universal electronics charger that rests on your wrist like a
watch. The geek set appeal is obvious, but for some of the company’s
zanier ideas, the April Fool’s Day line provides a perfect testing
ground.
“Geeks hate to be advertised to like they’re idiots,” says Ty Liotta,
Think Geek’s senior merchandiser. “They tend to be someone who is
probably more intelligent than the average person. They’ll see right
through a bunch of marketing mumbo jumbo.” And so in place of mumbo
jumbo, there are pranks. Why not send your friends a link to a PC
EZ-Bake Oven for a good laugh? It’s the best viral marketing a company
could ask for.
For every “product” that makes it to the site on the big day, there
are countless others that don’t make the final cut. Facebook
co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, was almost offered
up this year in the form of a plush doll. But the company nixed the
idea in the end. “It was just too complex,” co-founder Jen Frazier
says, explaining the hitch of a huggable Zuck. “Much like Facebook
itself,” says Willie Vadnais, another ThinkGeek co-founder.
Instead, customers will be sending around links to ThinkGeek’s own
Playmobil Apple Store Playset and Angry Birds
Pork Rinds. The Playmobil set, a mini Apple flagship store, comes
standard with Playmobil Apple employees and a Steve Jobs to deliver
inpromtu keynote speeches. You can even pop your iPhone 4 into the
side of the set to use as the store’s flat screen display. An add-on
set includes dozens of Playmobil people to line up outside your store
for Apple’s next product launch. Though the set will amuse Apple
enthusiasts, it’s the De-3D Cinema GlassesLiotta says might
really catch on.
For the moviegoer who wants to buck the recent reemergence of 3D, the
De-3D glasses allow the wearer to sit through a 3D film and see it in
regular, old 2D. “The funny thing about the idea is that it could
actually work,” he says. “We take the right eye of the glasses and
replicate it. Instead of taking the right eye and left eye that are
polarized differently, they’re polarized the same. You can only see
one frame in both eyes.” Though the widespread negativity on 3D might
make the glasses seem like a sure thing, the company will wait for
customer reaction before it actually produces them, though prototypes are made specifically for the April Fool’s product shots.
Lightsaber popsicles, Arsenic-based sea monkeys
