The Merry Pranksters were a circle of people who collected around American novelist Ken Kesey and writer Neal Cassady.
They are remembered chiefly for travelling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus enigmatically labelled "Furthur." The original purpose of the bus trip was to visit the World's Fair in New York City which took place in 1964. The Pranksters were heavy users of marijuana and LSD, and in the process of their journey they are said to have "turned on" many people whom they encountered to these drugs. These festivals were called "Acid Tests", with the catchphrase "Can you pass the acid test?" As such the Merry Pranksters were evangelists of a sort for the drug-related psychedelic and hippie counterculture of the 1960s.
It was at one of these Acid Tests that the psychedelic music band The Grateful Dead formed, and during the early, California-based happenings — the 1960s version of performance art — the Grateful Dead supplied the music; in essence, they were the house band for the moveable party.
The Pranksters' travels continued until 1969, when the bus (without Kesey) made it to the Woodstock rock festival. The original Prankster bus was returned to Kesey's rural home in Oregon. The Smithsonian Institution sought to acquire the bus, which is no longer operable, but Kesey refused to give or sell it to them. In true form, Kesey attempted to prank the venerable Smithsonian by passing off a phony bus. They didn't fall for it.
The Merry Pranksters are the subject of a book by Tom Wolfe called The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
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