The Conan O’Brian Show Thursday night aired yet another mock Apple (AAPL) video — its fourth this year, by our count. (See here, here and here.)

This one picks up where news stories about the lost iPhone 5 left off, with Cupertino’s crack engineers devising ever more fiendish punishments for whomever took the secret prototype. (Tag line: “You have no idea who you’re messing with.”)

Why does TeamCoco keep doing this?

First, I assume, because it’s good comedy. The story of the iPhone that walked out of a tequila bar is intrinsically funny. Also, there’s a pomposity to those Apple videos — the form that’s being spoofed here — that’s asking to be punctured. But most of all, the demographic that buys iPads and iPhones and follows Apple news is a perfect fit for Conan’s Twitter-driven comeback: young, hip, well-heeled and wired.

Conan’s spoofs are not without their clout. Plenty of Final Cut Pro users protested the release of Final Cut Pro X (and the withdrawal of its predecessor), but none so effectively as the post-production crew of the Conan O’Brian Show. Last week, two months after that video aired, Apple started quietly selling Final Cut Pro again.

Below the fold: The iPhone 5 torture video.

Via Forbes’s Brian Caufield.