April Fools so far includes football robots and a failed Google prank

Bogusad campaigns, a failed prank byGoogle, Ivy Leaguefootballrobotsand an attempt at humor on the fraught presidential campaign trail competed for attention in the United States on Friday, traditionally a day of hoaxes and spoofs.

The trick onAprilFools’Day is to be outlandish yet somewhat plausible.

“It gets more and more challenging to stand out,” said Rachael King, spokeswoman for ThirdLove, a lingerie maker that partnered with DogVacay, a pet sitting service, to unveil a fake line of dog brassieres.

The online campaign features photographs of dogs wearing bras and gazing off into the distance.

New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College, which last year beganusing a robotic tackling dummy it called “MVP” in an effort to reduce the number of hits its players absorb during practice, said therobotswould beused in games from next season.

“In the future, we’ll line up 11 MVPs and they’ll compete in the games forus. It’s a wonderful opportunity. Our players will execute their responsibilities by remote control,” HeadFootballCoach Buddy Teevens said in a tongue-in-cheek video. The film showed a robot failing atfootballdrills including running stairs and catching passes.

Googleunveiled a feature called “Mic Drop” that ended e-mails with an image of a minion character from the “Despicable Me” animated films and prevented recipients from replying.

The company quickly turned off the feature amid online criticism.

Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas also joined in, first tweeting that rival Donald Trump accepted his one-on-one debate invite and then saying the tweet was intended as a joke.

Another prank promoted “Jobs for Babies,” a new service to help the diaper set find their dream jobs, said Tierney Oakes, a spokeswoman for Beck Media & Marketing, which created video for ZipRecruiter, an online job posting service.

Babies are shown pounding on computer keyboards and crawling out of elevators as the video explains particular skills: learning 10 times faster than an adult, quickly picking up languages and staying awake at all hours of the night.