Try To Guess If These Food Commercials Are Fake Or Not

A few years ago, a fake Taco Bell commercial made headlines for featuring a gay couple and caused an internet storm of opinion. It was so realistic that Taco Bell had to check their own backyard before saying the ad wasn’t theirs, although they definitely sounded impressed at it.

More recently, a faux Olive Garden commercial, featuring a drive-thru restaurant called “Olive Garden Pronto,” surfaced on the internet and looked real enough to convince people that Olive Garden was in fact making this concept happen.

Both of these were conceptualized by the Merkin Bros., a collective of four guys that make fake commercials of brands like Dell, Taco Bell, Olive Garden, and Abercrombie & Fitch. All of them have previously worked in the film industry and with ad agencies in the past, and have helped generate content for sites like Funny or Die, according to Munchies.

Those experiences have set them up perfectly for these hilarious projects, in which they utilize everything from food styling and cheap ingenuity to bring things to life. The Alfredo Pocket in the Olive Garden ad, for example, was designed by a food stylist and made by literally gluing pasta around a Hot Pocket.

By understanding what goes into the messaging of each brand and how to convey it best to the public, the Merkin Bros. have been highly successful at creating convincingly funny ads that just border between reality and fiction. They’ve subsequently been invited to Taco Bell’s headquarters for their work, and even got a witty response out of Olive Garden for their latest commercial.

Project Pronto has leaked!? 😱

We’ll have to scrap this prototype but if the Merkin Bros. are ever in town we always need taste-testers. 😉 pic.twitter.com/Y0IrIHPTuy

— Olive Garden (@olivegarden) September 28, 2017

It’ll definitely be interesting to see which company the Merkin Bros. parody next, and whether the internet can tell if its real or not.