April Fools’ Day has come a long way from the silly pranks we pulled in our youth. These days, pranks are much more sophisticated, landing on our news feeds from official sources who are allowed to let loose for a single day of the year. Everyone gets in on the fun — and the military and veteran community is no exception.
Here are some of the highlights from April Fools’ Day 2018:
Marlow White Uniforms
Marlow White Uniforms has been the official manufacturer of Army, Navy, and First Responder dress uniforms since 1879. That’s right, these are the guys responsible for the Army’s “throwback” to Pinks and Greens.
Chances are the people that got hyped by this video are the same people waiting on the sequel to Star Wars: Rogue One.
Ranger Up Military and MMA Apparel
Ranger Up stuck with an oldie-but-a-goodie.
Plenty of folks in the comment section caught on before it was too late. Others now have one of the catchiest 80s songs stuck in their head.
Terminal Lance
Terminal Lance has been setting up this joke for a while now. Previously, they ran a poll on whether the titular character, LCpl. Abe, should re-enlist. Overwhelmingly, fans didn’t want the comics to turn into a story about being a veteran.
Then, Uriarte published some comics about talking to a prior-service recruiter on Mar. 31 — followed by a few posts that said he was talking to a prior-service recruiter.
The joke actually has multiple layers considering it’s been a yearly tradition to give other ranks, branches, and even British Marines their time in the spotlight. Many expected Max to follow suite this year. Nope. April Fools’ Day doesn’t work like that (sorry to all of you still waiting on Terminal Airman comics).
Disgrunted Vets
There’s always been a healthy dose of confusion between Dysfunctional Veterans and Disgruntled Vets. The same thing happens on Reddit when people mix up Terminal_Lance and TLCplMax (Hint: the term isn’t exclusive to the webcomic).
Disgruntled Vets masterfully added to this confusion.
10th Combat Aviation Brigade
The U.S. Army has command over every realm of fighting — except one: underground.
They thought we wouldn’t notice if they took a still from a ShutterStock animation, but we did. Well played, 10th CAB. Well played.
Official Twitter of the U.S. Marine Corps
And the winner of this year’s April Fools’ Day, hands down, goes to the official Twitter of the United States Marine Corps.
While everyone was busy putting an immense amount of time into their pranks, all the Marine Corps social media team needed to do was say they were going to do just one thing like the Army and everyone lost their collective sh*t. Lucky for us, nobody ever actually reads articles on April Fools’ Day before heading to the comment section.
Whoever made this tweet is a credit to the Corps and everything it stands for. BZ.