If you headed to Amazon this morning, you must have stumbled upon an old-fashioned, weird and fun website. Don’t worry – you didn’t go back in time! The retailer did! That’s right, Amazon has gone retro for April Fools’ day with an old classic design of its website.
Remember when you first discovered audio compact disks? When you actually could download music, films and books from the Internet? Now it seems ages ago, but it’s more like 20-25 years back in time. That was a great, romantic time when we watched the MTV, read newspapers every morning, and didn’t care about the Chinese economy or the Kardashian clan. Feeling nostalgic? Apparently the largest online retailer does. Today, it introduced a brand new design for its website. Or should we say a really old design, instead?
To mark April Fools’ Day Amazon came up with quite an original joke – it put a retro design on the main page of the website. Entering, you can see the old look it sported back in 1996-1999. In the top right angle, you will even see the date – April 1, 1999. Yes, the main page has literally gone back in time – with browsing categories such as Books, Music, Video, Electronics, Auctions, and so on. Featured on the main page are also Amazon’s 100 Hot Books, as well as Today in Music and Video, where the retailer has, of course, put titles such as “April Fool’s Day, Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew” book by Carolyn Keene or the song “Chain of Fools” by Aretha Franklin. But what’s even funnier is that you can pre-order “The Matrix” on DVD, while most of the movies are available on… VHS!
Of course, this main page is a total fake – you can’t actually order anything. In fact, once you click anywhere on it, the actual Amazon website reveals itself. The prank isn’t really crazy as many others are today on the Internet. But it certainly makes you smile and feel a bit nostalgic about the 90s.
