Practical joke device

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An overinflated whoopee cushion

A practical joke device is a toy intended to confuse, frighten, or amuse individuals as a prank. Often, these objects are harmless facsimiles of disgusting or terrifying objects, such as vomit or spilled nail polish. In other instances, they are created as seemingly harmless items designed to humorously malfunction in such a way as to confuse or harm the target of a prank. The devices are frequently sold in magic or specialty shops, purchased over the Internet, or crafted for oneself. Perhaps the most notable such device is the whoopee cushion.

Although commonly employed at events and gatherings, practical joke devices are sometimes seen in everyday life, either as a mechanism of play by children, or among adult co-workers in a work environment. In addition to commercially manufactured practical joke devices, everyday objects have been converted into joke devices by purveyors of pranks.

Types of practical joke devices[edit]

Excrement[edit]

Fake excrement
  • Excrement pile
  • Soiled diaper
  • Vomit
  • Snot (for attaching to the nose)

Body parts[edit]

Artificial body parts can be, for example, attached on or under autos (to pretend as if someone's lost a limb after they're run over).

  • artificial arm, foot or hand
  • jammed finger
  • oversized feet
  • protruding eyes (accessory or on glasses)
  • Truck nutz

Horror devices[edit]

  • Arrow in head
  • Arrow and fake blood[1]
  • Nail through finger or head
  • Knife in head

Fake animals[edit]

  • A fake shark dorsal fin to appear to onlookers as a live shark pursuing a swimmer at a public beach or pool[citation needed]
  • Vermin: mice, rats, snakes, spiders, worms, etc.
  • Partial (or injured) stuffed toy animals
    • A stuffed-animal tiger's tail as a promotional gimmick for "a tiger in your tank" (Esso oil company slogan)[citation needed]
    • Partial animals such as a half cat, designed to appear so that the rest of the animal is trapped in a closed/latched door or storage compartment[citation needed]
    • Roadkill animals or fake remains of injured animals. One such "Dead Dog Prop", billed as a "foam filled latex prop of a skinned dog with large tire track squished through its mid torso, chain attached for dragging purposes," was pulled from Sears, Walmart and Amazon websites a few days before Halloween 2013.[2][3]

Clothing[edit]

Smoking articles[edit]

  • Lit cigarette lookalike device
  • Bang-producing matches
  • Exploding cigars
  • Exploding cigarette inserts
  • Cigarette burn sticker
  • Squirting cigarette
  • Lighters (with electric shock, squirting, or bang-producing)
  • Everlasting ash (the ash does not fall off)
Nail polish

Liquids[edit]

  • Fake blood
  • Magic ink (disappears after a short time)
  • Stink bomb
  • Broken egg with shell
  • Fake spilled liquid with container, such as nail polish, chocolate syrup, red wine, etc.
  • Squirting flower or camera

Embarrassment[edit]


Fake leg
Breast-shaped shower gel/shampoo dispenser

Everyday objects[edit]

  • Pen (with electric shock, or to set off a cap)
  • Camera (with electric shock or squirting)
  • Bitter candy (or e.g. with garlic flavor)
  • Golf ball made of gypsum (shatters to powder when struck)
  • Beer mug with enclosed liquid
  • Pack of chewing gum (with smacking spring, squirting, electric shock, or to set off a cap)
  • Water balloons
  • Squeaking salt shaker
  • Banana peels
  • Foaming sugar cube
  • Ring (squirting)
  • Telescope with ink on lens (leaves a black circle around the victim's eye after use)
  • Snake nut can looks like a can of nuts but has a spring snake inside, surprising the victim when opened.

Toiletries[edit]

  • Novelty soap
    • Soot soap - turns hands black
    • Blood soap
    • Butt/Face soap (large bar soap one side white with the word "FACE" and the other side brown with the word "BUTT")
  • Toilet paper

Documents and currency[edit]

  • Fake lottery tickets
  • Fake traffic tickets
  • Fake or novelty currency
    • Coin glued to a sidewalk or bogus currency glued inside a toilet bowl where hapless finders will attempt to retrieve it.
    • Banknotes printed on one side only or one half of the page, so as to look valid when folded. Once unfolded, the remainder of the document is blank or carries a message or promotional advertisement
    • Fake denominations of currency such as the three dollar bill. The Smoking Gun reports a bogus-denomination $US200 depicting George W. Bush having been accepted at a Food Lion store;[4] other reports list a Dairy Queen in Danville, Kentucky as a victim of this hoax.[5] Another variant is the use of unrealistically large fictional denominations such as one million or a billion dollars.[6]
    • Currency depicting recent incumbent politicians instead of historical leaders, usually casting them in an unfavourable light. A Pierre Elliott Trudeau "fuddle dollar" may identify itself as inflated and worthless currency, or a non-standard denomination featuring the presidential likenesses of Nixon, Bush, or Trump may present itself as unreliable, untrustworthy, or worthless as a means of parodying these figures.
    • Currency issued by fictional, defunct, or non-sovereign entities, such as a reprint of the now-worthless Confederate dollar or a parody "Quebuck" purporting to be issued by Québec separatists.
    • Currency issued on non-standard media (such as rubber "to stretch a dollar" or toilet paper as an implicit acknowledgement the money being parodied is worthless) or marked on its face as "funny money" issued by counterfeiters.
  • Camouflage passports from fictional nations or planets.
  • A bogus charge card entitled "Major Credit Card" and purporting to be "for major purchases only".
  • A bogus charge card whose name and branding is a clear parody of an existing, well-known card and slogan. A Yakov Smirnoff book cover depicting a Russian version of American Express with slogan "Don't leave home" is one example.

Others[edit]

  • Joy buzzer (hand buzzer)
  • Bullet hole or glasscrack
  • Covert TV Clicker (a miniature remote that controls TVs). These differ from standard universal remote controls in that they blindly, without interruption, send the turn-off code for every make of television in sequence. No attempt is made to determine which is the valid code or provide any useful control other than turning the TV off.
  • Hot candy
  • Cheap inflatable dolls. Inflatable sheep or goats are manufactured solely as a practical joke item [citation needed].
  • Pie (to be sat on or thrown at the face of a victim)
  • Chinese finger trap (to get victim's finger stuck)
  • The video game Bad Rats[7]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ An arrow with fake blood appears in Phil Collins - Don't Lose My Number Archived 2016-12-06 at the Wayback Machine (Official Video) at the 0:04:24 mark.
  2. ^ "Dead dog prop pulled from Walmart, Sears websites". KSDK NBC 5. 2013-09-17. Archived from the original on 2013-10-27. Retrieved 2013-10-27.
  3. ^ "Americans will spend nearly $7 billion on Halloween". MSN Money. Archived from the original on 2013-10-26. Retrieved 2013-10-27.
  4. ^ "Bush Phony As A $200 Bill". The Smoking Gun. September 12, 2003. Archived from the original on August 15, 2014. Retrieved July 27, 2014.
  5. ^ "Museum of Hoaxes". Archived from the original on 2014-07-02. Retrieved 2014-07-27.
  6. ^ "Attention Messrs Gates, Buffett: $1B Bank Notes Discovered". Forbes. 2006-03-15. Archived from the original on 2013-10-29. Retrieved 2013-10-27.
  7. ^ Grayson, Nathan (20 May 2015). "Six Years Later, Bad Rats Is Still Known As Steam's Shittiest Game". Kotaku. Archived from the original on 11 December 2020. Retrieved 11 December 2020.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Practical joke devices.
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