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How brands celebrated April Fools’ Day with imaginary products

Libby Nelson is Vox's policy editor, leading coverage of how government action and inaction shape American life. Libby has more than a decade of policy journalism experience, including at Inside Higher Ed and Politico. She joined Vox in 2014.

April Fools' Day is always a good reminder of how much time someone spent to come up with and market products that will almost certainly never exist, all while trying to be funny.

So far, Google fared worst: Its Mic Drop button infuriated users so much that they had to apologize. But buyer beware: If you thought about purchasing any of these new products announced today, the good (or bad) news is that they don't exist.

April Fools' products that don't exist, but maybe should

Duolingo brings us a pillow that will teach you a language overnight for just $99:

Esurance is advertising "election insurance" so that you can leave the country if your preferred candidate loses:

Licking an iPhone screen, as OpenTable says it could give you a taste of your upcoming meal, seems extremely unsanitary. But imagine what this technology could do for recipe searching!

The Mark Zuckerberg for H&M collection (identical gray T-shirts and jeans) is actually pretty well-done:

April Fools' products that make us worry about their creators

Artisanal toilet paper is so horrifyingly plausible, I had to check to make sure there weren't Portland Airbnbs already using it.

Space salt from FreshDirect, because the world doesn't have enough ridiculously expensive salt:

Dog bras. No. Just no.

April Fools' products that already exist (more or less)

This Zumba-Roomba collaboration on a vacuum that also plays music was already invented by Tom Haverford, Aziz Ansari's character on Parks and Rec.

Horrifyingly, preschool student loans, an April Fools' Day joke from CommonBond, actually already exist in New York.

And you actually can search the Google Photos service by emoij:

Hopefully it sticks around after April 1.