The annual Consumer Electronics Show is over. Sadly it was not the latest and greatest technological innovation that caught my eye amongst all of the product announcements. It was an April Fool’s Joke. Specifically, it was yet another joke product from the minds of the screaming monkeys at thinkgeek.com. Every year for April Fool’s day they come up with a series of fake products to advertise and sell on their site, and inevitably they rook a few hundred people into trying to order them. Past fake products included: caffeinated meatloaf, USB Desktop Tanning Center, Wireless Extension Cords, and the ZapCam – YouTube Tazer. You can experience the joy/frustration of thinkgeek’s April Fool’s page directly be clicking here.
But the irony is that several of their joke products have gone on to become actual products sold through their site, and rather successfully at that. Here’s at least a few:
- Grow Your Own 1up Mushroom
- The ThinkGeek 8-bit Tie
- Personal Soundtrack Shirt
- USB Pet Rock
- Tauntaun Sleeping Bag
- Canned Unicorn Meat
- Space Monolith Action Figure
- My First Bacon – Talking Plush
Well, the latest product to make the jump from joke to sale aisle has just been announced at CES, the iCade (iPad arcade Cabinet). The iCade is a Bluetooth enabled arcade joystick with buttons, as well as iPad stand. It’s being built by ION Audio in conjunction with Thinkgeek, and they are working with Atari (and possibly unnamed others) to bring classic arcade games to the platform. So far, Atari has shown Asteroids as already working and ready for use with the device. The iCade is expected to ship for $99 ($50 less than the fake version), and will be available in two styles, the April Fool’s version available exclusively from Thinkgeek (pictured above) and a more generic one sold through various retailers (shown below).
And yes, I’m looking forward to owning one of these.
