About

The Chef Boyardee Challenge refers to a series of parody videos in which participants recreate a Chef Boyardee canned pasta commercial that features a can of Chef Boyardee following a little girl home.

ORigin

On April 28th, 2004, AdAge^[1] shared the Chef Boyardee commercial entitled "Rolling Can" (shown below). The commercial features a little girl picking up a can of Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli at the supermarket. When the girl's mother puts the can back, the can follows the family home.

On August 6th, 2010, YouTuber Mike Stubz 1989 published a version of the commercial with new narration. The post received more than 47,000 views in less than 10 years (shown below, left)

The earliest available parody was published by YouTuber BRMStudios on May 29th, 2011. The post received more than 16,000 views in less than nine years (shown below, right).

Spread

Over the next decade, parodies of the commercial would continue to appear online. On Apri 2nd, 2016, YouTuber Adam Keener published a variation that received more than 3,100 views in less than four years (shown below, left).

TikTok Revival

In 2019, parodies of the commericals spread on social media network TikTok. One of the earliest was posted on September 19th, 2019 by TikTok user @anthonygmonroe. The post received more than 383,000 reactions, 6,900 shares and 675 comments in about three months (shown below, left).

Over the next few months, others shared versions as well (example below, center and right).

On December 18th, Twitter user @JamoBallin shared a version from TikTok on Twitter. The post received more than 1.2 million views, 106,000 likes and 36,000 retweets in less than two days (shown below).

the Chef Boyardee can was like 😭😭😭😭😭#chefboyardeechallenge pic.twitter.com/h2ojgQbTc5

— El Garbagé from 183rd (@JamoBallin) December 18, 2019

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References