What Is The Infamous 'Folgers Incest Christmas Commercial'? The Legendary Holiday Classic Explained

It doesn't even run anymore, but in the late 2000s and early 2010s, a commercial for Folgers was so memorable that many who saw it can still recall just how bizarre it was all these years later. Many readers are already keenly aware of what exactly this article is going to be about, but for those who are confused, let's recap the wondrous "Folgers Incest Commercial," aka "Brother and Sister."

What Is The Folgers "Incest" Commercial?

In 2009, Folgers launched a 45-second commercial based on the simple premise that a young man returns home (from "West Africa," apparently) just in time for the holidays. He arrives at the crack of dawn and is greeted by his sister (who says "Sister!" to make things clear to the viewer), and they have some Folgers coffee ("real coffee," as the brother exclaims). The two share a sip and the sister puts a little bow on him. "You're my present this year," she says.

For many viewers, there is something off about this whole scene. The "brother and sister" share too many deep looks into each other's eyes and are extremely, uh, sincere about how much they miss each other. In short, there's a lot of sexual tension, which was almost certainly not intentional but very obvious to the general public.

That interpretation was instantly widespread as well. The commercial aired on December 14th, 2009, and the first person saying it felt incestuous made that claim on December 16th. The first parody to heighten the sexual tension was posted within a month of the commercial entering syndication.

The legend of the "Folgers Incest Commercial" unraveled from there, as parodies began popping up every holiday season and it became a regular part of Web 2.0's holiday media coverage.

There's also a devoted fanfiction community around the ad — on fanfiction site Archive of Our Own, the commercial has inspired a vast body of work.

How Did The Folgers Incest Commercial Happen?

The commercial stopped running in 2012, but the anatomy of the infamous ad has been subject to dissection for years since it aired.

The commercial is an updated version of an old Folgers classic, "Peter Comes Home for Christmas." In the original ad, which ran in the 80s, a brother comes home for Christmas and is again greeted by his sister. The difference between the two is that in the original version, Peter is a grown man and the sister is a toddler.

Since the updated commercial's rise to infamy, many have worked to uncover just how the commercial came to be. In a 2015 interview with Vanity Fair, the brother in the updated version, actor Matthew Alan, revealed the incestuous undertones were not intentional.

"I thought it was great at the time," he said. "For me, booking a job like this, it was huge, but I had no idea what to expect from it. I definitely didn’t expect it to kind of blow up on me, ending up the way that it did, for sure."

In 2019, GQ went down the rabbit hole with an entire "oral history" behind the ad. The producers and director behind the ad clearly had no idea they were making an incest-y commercial, judging from their testimonies.

Furthermore, actor Matthew Alan and actress Catherine Combs, who plays the sister, had met on set that day and, according to Alan, hadn't crossed paths since. There was no romantic chemistry between the IRL pair of actors, at least not to the point where anyone on set noticed.

For more information, check out the Folgers brother and sister commercial entry on Know Your Meme.