Menachem melamed: As far as some of these are concerned, you are emphatically right. As far as others are concerned, I disagree. As far as the ones I posted are concerned, they were all, to the best of my knowledge, performed in Adar, in schools where they weren’t exactly expected but at least weren’t really out of left field.
In my school, if you’re the senior class and you DON’T have a good prank, you’re ‘shvach’.
Added note: In the case of the popcorn, after the initial reaction one girl held up a bowl to collect the popcorn and recovered most of it. The rest was cleaned up by the girls. The Saran wrap was removed by the girls.
One bad prank I heard of was someone pretending to hit someone else with a car(prearranged by both, with the intention of scaring a third person). Unfortunately, they were a bit too realistic, and scared a fourth person, who happened to be the fake victim’s yiddishe mama. That is not the kind of prank I personally condone.