This article was published on April 1, 2012

TomTom’s April Fools’ Prank: An unlikely combination of Darth Vader and giggling babies


TomTom’s April Fools’ Prank: An unlikely combination of Darth Vader and giggling babies

We’ve covered our fair share of April Fools’ pranks from around the Web today, with Google’s, count them, fourteen pranks (so far), our very own homegrown prank at The Next Web, and a roundup of some of the best jokes we’ve seen today.

That said, we couldn’t pass up on TomTom’s brilliantly executed video, TomTom Makes Babies Laugh. Any parent, no doubt, knows the pain of driving with a crying baby in the back of the car, with little they can do to soothe them.

TomTom’s latest ‘feature’ offers parents a guaranteed way to keep their little ones giggling in the back seat all day long. How does it go about doing that? With the use of a rather unlikely, and extremely breathy, voice. Forget the bland, monotonous droid voice that most navigational systems come with. Your kids want Darth Vader:

With six months of ‘research’ under TomTom’s belt, during its aptly named Project GAGA (not to be confused with the singer of the same name), they discovered that Darth Vader was 68% more likely to keep kids happy, while Yoda reduced them to tears.

While, of course, the use of various voices on your GPS system won’t keep kids entertained, we can imagine that quite a few of you, whether parents or not, might yourselves be entertained. You’ll be happy to know that the voices aren’t an April Fools’ joke as well, and can be purchased from the TomTom website.

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