The Christmas season brings out some of the best and most famous commercials ever. Now that people have abandoned cable/satellite TV for streaming services, they can pay a little extra to avoid the frustration of having to sit through a boring commercial or two. Or having to wait five seconds that seem like five minutes to hit that “Skip Ad” tab so fast Barry Allen couldn’t stop your hand.
About 15 years ago, when YouTube was just taking off, Folgers aired a commercial that had people scratching their heads thinking – “Wait, what?”
Of course, there’s always a chance we’re reading too much into it. Not everything has a double meaning to it. But in a mere 45 seconds, I along with other people questioned whether if there was something else going on.
The setting is Christmas morning in a typical upper-middle class family where some young man (Matthew Alan) is returning home from the Peace Corps in West Africa. Yet, however, he doesn’t know that this part of the continent produces the most cocoa beans ever around the world.
So, he is greeted by a teenage girl (Catherine Combs) at the door and they hug as she says, “Sister.” But why? Reports indicate the ad writers from Saatchi & Saatchi were trying to make an ad in the vein of the 1985 Folgers “Peter Comes Home For Christmas.”
That commercial looks like a college student, Peter, being dropped off from a VW bug and walking through the door with an arm full of presents to be met by his sister who is the elementary school age. And because they’re never too young to be introduced to cocoa beans ground and filtered through tap water, Peter decides to make a pot of coffee with his young sister. This wakes up the rest of his family, which seem to include parents, another sister is is teenage era and a brother who is also the same age.
It’s nice and pleasant. It shows that Christmas is a time of togetherness as people celebrate the holidays. So, why not update it for a new decade and a new century?
However for the 2009 commercial, they were hoping the sister would still be a young girl who hadn’t gone through puberty yet. Combs who is the daughter of actors Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator) and Alice Cadogan (who played the hotel clerk Eddie Murphy accuses of being a racist in Beverly Hills Cop). She was 19 at the time of commercial’s release. And she was dating someone connected to the commercial’s production.
So, Alan, who was 30 at the time and looks like the son of actor Greg Germann (Ally McBeal and Grey’s Anatomy). But yet, Alan looks younger like a college graduate who just spent some time overseas. And his character says he brought her a present as he’s happy to be drinking Folgers coffee other than that overseas stuff.
The present is a little box that has a bow on it. The sister hops up on the counter as she’s wearing clothes that look like she’s about to spark a doobie. I guess this was how they thought she would appear younger even though she clearly looks college age. And then she looks at him and takes the bow off and put it on his upper chest saying, “You’re my present this year.”
And then they give each other the “Fuck Me” eyes. This leads me to wonder if this is a role play scenario. And the parents who apparently can be woken by the smell of Folgers in a big house come into the kitchen. Everyone is happy. But you know brother and sister are going to fuck eventually.
It’s the whole “Fuck Me” eyes moment. If that had been taken out, you would’ve just seen it as a hokey commercial and it wouldn’t be so awkward.
The commercial has coined a phrase “Folgercest” and has been parodied on TV shows like Tosh.0 which inserted a snippet of the sister rubbing her brother’s crotch area before the parents come in. Another parody has it switching to a different set of actors when the parents come in, leading to the parents freaking out. Apparently, the brother has bought an engagement ring for his sister. Then the father tackles them and they fight as the mother tries to console the daughter as she screams, “I just want to fuck my brother!” It’s bleeped out but you know what it is.
The link is right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhfcWTZeP1k
Alan, who mostly has worked in TV on shows like 13 Reasons Why, Castle Rock and Dahmer – Monster, The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, said in a 2019 GQ interview said the commercial was shot during the summer of 2009 in Santa Monica, Calif. He hadn’t met Combs before and hasn’t seen her since. Combs has been very silent about the commercial even refusing to be interviewed for the magazine article.
The commercial pretty much stop being aired in 2012 even though its legacy will live on in the forever world of the Internet, where it can be found in its entirety on YouTube and other websites. The biggest question is why did Folgers and its parent company The J.M. Smucker Company okay those few awkward seconds, which could’ve been snipped out by some kid on a computer.
As a former news editor myself, I know that you can miss some things even if you’ve watched it over and over. That’s why you need a second or third set of eyes on something. And it’s not like this was filmed fast and rushed to the TV stations. I mean, it was just 45 seconds. It wasn’t like they were making a Terrence Malick or Stanley Kubrick movie going through countless takes and miles of film to find the best of the best of the best that fits in.
It’s a commercial for coffee people buy when they don’t want to look too cheap buying Maxwell House or the store brand. I know the quote is “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” but sometimes siblings don’t look at each other like that if they are doing something the parents need to know about.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 