Folgers "Brother and Sister" Commercial

About

The Folgers "Brother and Sister" Commercial is a holiday-themed television commercial for Folgers coffee. In the commercial, a brother returns to America from a long trip to West Africa and early in the morning, arrives at his family's house, where he is greeted by his sister. The commercial has grown infamous because of what many perceive as sexual tension between the brother and sister, and has inspired numerous parodies and fanfiction.

Origin

The commercial is an updated version of a long-running Folgers commercial that first ran in 1982 in which a man named "Peter" comes home and his greeted by his litte sister, who is a toddler.

The updated version in which the brother and sister are closer in age first ran during the holiday season in 2009. As of December 14th, 2016, the unedited commercial has over 1.2 million views on YouTube (the video has since been deleted, shown below is a re-upload from a different channel).

Spread

Viewers instantly noticed the sexual tension between the brother and sister in the 2009 commercial. The earliest known post to make this observation was posted December 16th, 2009 by the blog Cleveland's a Plum.^[1] On January 10th, YouTuber Paul Prato posted an edit of the commercial in which the stare between the brother and sister is extended to convey heightened sexual tension before their parents enter the kitchen. His video, shown below, has over 276,000 views.

On March 5th, 2012, Funny Or Die^[2] posted an edit to the commercial by sketch comedy group Pilotsketch in which the only change is a two-second additional shot that shows one of the siblings' hands grazing the other's crotch (YouTube embed shown below).

Later that year, the commercial's infamy began quickly spreading on Tumblr and Twitter after user of both sites JayGabler^[3] posted a screenshot of a tweet by Nicole James to his Tumblr that read "Nothing gets me in the holiday mood like that incest/Folgers commercial." JayGabler's post, which linked to the original ad, has gained over 222,000 notes.

The spread of JayGabler's post drew the attention The Daily Dot^[4], who covered internet users' incestuous reading of the commercial. From 2012 on, the commercial's infamy has been regularly covered during the holiday season. Buzzfeed^[5] covered it in 2014, and Uproxx,^[6] Adweek^[12] and Bustle^[7] covered it in 2015. Vanity Fair^[8] interviewed the brother in 2015, and discovered he had no idea at the time that the commercial had incestuous undertones, but realized later and enjoyed the internet's response to it.

Fanfiction

The commercial has inspired several fanfiction stories in which the brother and sister have sex. Gawker^[9] covered the fanfictions in 2012. As of December 14th, 2016, fanfiction site archiveofourown^[10] has 19 stories under the "Folgers 'Home for the Holidays' Commercial" category. The most popular, "A Home for All Seasons" by orphan_account,^[11] has over 33,000 hits.

Search Interest

External References