HARRISBURG (TNS) — Senior pranks are traditionally something a group of graduating high schoolers pull off before walking the stage to get their diplomas.
But instead of duping school faculty and fellow classmates, this group of graduates pranked a whole town instead.
On April 30, Facebook user Marlena Calobong posted about a prank played on the residents of Pasadena, Maryland, where the high schoolers fooled the residents into thinking a Trader Joe’s was coming to the neighborhood.
“To my Pasadena friends,” Calobong wrote. “Yesterday the Senior class of our local high school pranked the ENTIRE town!”
In the post, Calobong explains that a group of seniors hung a banner that read “Coming Soon” in front of a closed grocery store property. It also read the words, “Spring 2025,” along with the signature, red and white colors of the Trader Joe’s logo.
A QR code was also provided on the sign. But once excited residents scanned the code with their phones they were sent not to a Trader Joe’s website, but to the video for Rick Astley’s 1987 hit song, “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Yes, they had been rickrolled.
Calobong admitted the prank was a good one.
“The whole town was abuzz yesterday morning, thinking we were getting a Trader Joe’s!” Calobong continued. “AND again this morning to find out it was just a prank…” she wrote with laughing emojis.
“Well, they got us all!!! That was a good one!!!” she wrote.
“We were extremely excited to see a sign pop up that we were getting another Trader Joe’s close to home,” Calobong told Today, also mentioning that a friend texted her about the true origin of the sign. “We were sad to find out the next day it was a prank. Definitely tricked us all.”
Other folks in town chimed in about the prank in their own social media posts.
“Kids can be so cruel,” wrote one Facebook commenter.
“Trader Joe’s at Mars store Pasadena? Apparently, this was a joke. Not happening,” another Facebook user wrote.
TikTok user Alyssa Smith commended the group of seniors.
“If you are a victim of the senior prank that a Trader Joe’s was coming to Pasadena, raise your hand,” Smith said in the video as she raised her hand.
“These kids had to have had help from older millennials or Gen Xers because how do they even know what a rickroll is?” she continued. “I mean, come on. Too funny.”
Representatives for Northeast High School have yet to confirm whether or not its seniors are responsible for the prank.
