# Folgers "Brother and Sister" Commercial A 2009 Folgers coffee ad featuring a brother returning from West Africa and his sister greeting him with a Christmas bow turned infamous after viewers read sexual tension into the siblings' lingering glances. Bloggers flagged the ad within days of its December debut, and by 2012 Tumblr users and fanfiction writers had built an entire incest-themed fandom around it. ## Origin The 2009 ad is an update of a long-running Folgers Christmas commercial first aired in 1982, in which a man called Peter comes home and is greeted by a toddler-aged little sister running down the stairs[3]. Folgers reshot the premise for the 2009 holiday season with the siblings closer in age, casting Matthew Alan as the brother returning from a Peace Corps-inspired trip to West Africa and Catherine Combs as the sister[2]. Vanity Fair later reported the two actors did not meet until the first day of shooting at a house dressed with fake snow in Santa Monica[2]. The earliest documented post calling the new version creepy went up on December 16, 2009, four days into the ad's run, on the blog Cleveland's a Plum, which asked "is it just me or does peter want to bang his little sister?" and pointed at the 37-second mark where the brother seems to linger on his sister[3]. Know Your Meme traces the viral reading back to that same post[7]. - **Platform:** Television (2009 air date) / Tumblr (viral spread) - **Creator:** Folgers (advertiser); viral reinterpretation by online viewers - **Date:** 2009 ## Overview The Folgers "Brother and Sister" Commercial is a 45-second holiday spot in which a young man named only as the brother returns from a volunteer trip to West Africa and brews coffee while chatting with his sister before their parents come downstairs[1]. The scene that drove the online reaction comes near the end: the sister peels the red bow off the gift he brought her, presses it to his chest and says, "You're my present this year," while the two hold a long look across the kitchen[2]. Viewers argued the staging, the close framing and the chemistry between the two actors played less like sibling reunion and more like a come-on[3]. The ad spread as a reinterpretation rather than a template. People shared the original clip under captions about incest, posted edits that extended the lingering glance, and wrote fanfiction continuing the scene past the point the commercial cuts away[4][5]. Holiday-season writeups at outlets like Bustle and Vanity Fair kept returning to the same two beats, the bow and the stare, as the moments that made the ad read wrong[2][6]. ## How to Use Rather than a reusable format, the ad is shared as a recurring holiday joke. Common conventions include reposting the original clip with captions about incest, cutting extended or altered edits that play up the stare between the siblings, and writing fanfiction from the brother's internal point of view during the kitchen scene[4][5]. The joke typically runs each December as the ad reappears in people's feeds. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Folgers "Brother and Sister" Commercial? It is a 2009 Folgers holiday television ad in which a brother home from West Africa reunites with his sister over coffee, which viewers widely reinterpreted as having incestuous undertones[2]. ### Where did Folgers "Brother and Sister" Commercial come from? Folgers reshot a premise from its 1982 "Peter comes home" Christmas commercial with older siblings, casting Matthew Alan and Catherine Combs for the 2009 holiday season[2]. ### What does Folgers "Brother and Sister" Commercial mean? Online it is shorthand for an ad whose lingering glances and the sister's "You're my present this year" line played to audiences as sexual tension rather than sibling affection[6]. ### How do you use Folgers "Brother and Sister" Commercial? People reshare the clip each December with incest captions, post edits that extend the stare between the siblings, and write fanfiction continuing the kitchen scene[8][10]. ### Is Folgers "Brother and Sister" Commercial still popular? The ad was annual holiday copy at BuzzFeed, Bustle, Uproxx and Adweek through the mid-2010s and is treated as a classic Christmas internet artifact[4][12]. ### Who are the actors in the Folgers "Brother and Sister" Commercial? The brother is played by Matthew Alan and the sister by Catherine Combs; Vanity Fair reported the two did not meet until the first day of shooting[2]. ### Why do people call it the Folgers incest commercial? The brother's long look at his sister and her line "You're my present this year" while pressing a bow to his chest read to viewers as romantic rather than familial[3]. ### What was the first post about the ad being creepy? On December 16, 2009, the blog Cleveland's a Plum published the earliest known post flagging the ad's sexual overtones[3]. ### Is there Folgers commercial fanfiction? Archive of Our Own hosts a tag for the ad with stories including orphan_account's "A Home for All Seasons," which passed tens of thousands of hits[11]. ### Did the actor Matthew Alan know about the online reaction? He told Vanity Fair in 2015 he had no idea during filming and only found out years later when friends sent him YouTube links, and said he enjoyed the response[2]. ### What is the Funny Or Die version of the Folgers commercial? On March 5, 2012, Funny Or Die hosted a Pilotsketch edit that spliced in a two-second shot of one sibling's hand brushing the other's crotch[8]. ## References 1. [https://web.archive.org/web/20091220034607/http://www.clevelandsaplum.com/2009/12/creepy-folgers-holiday-commercial.html]() 2. [https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/12/the-folgers-brother-sister-christmas-commercial-explained]() 3. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4kNl7cQdcU]() 4. [https://www.bustle.com/articles/131838-that-folgers-brother-sister-christmas-commercial-has-finally-been-explained]() 5. [https://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-best-part-of-waking-up?utm_term=.smLkV1GAY]() 6. [https://uproxx.com/hitfix/10-reasons-the-incestuous-folgers-commercial-is-our-modern-christmas-classic/]() 7. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/folgers-brother-and-sister-commercial]() 8. [https://www.funnyordie.com/2012/3/5/17713934/folgers-fail]() 9. [https://jaygabler.tumblr.com/post/36006559701/i-had-to-google-this-worth-it]() 10. [https://gawker.com/5961772/kick-off-the-christmas-season-with-thousands-of-words-of-incest-fanfic-about-the-weirdest-folgers-commercial-of-all-time]() 11. [https://archiveofourown.org/works/301952?view_adult=true]() 12. [https://www.adweek.com/creativity/uncomfortable-folgers-ad-about-brother-and-sister-now-has-extended-parody-version-168512/]() 13. [https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/folgers-incest-holiday-commercial-family/]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/folgers-brother-and-sister-commercial Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library