Bobby Shmurda Matza
This project was Advanced Play Labs first group prank prototype. We decided to put together a shop-dropping project just in time for Passover. Shop-dropping is the act of sneaking some object into a store and placing it amongst the other merchandise, making it appear as if the store is selling that object. For our shop drop, we designed and made a fake brand of shmura matzo (bread for the Jewish holiday, Passover) endorsed by real life rapper, Bobby Shmurda.The concept and design were created by myself (Dashiell Bark-Huss) and another Advanced Play Labs participant. We then later invited other participants to join in for making the boxes and shop dropping them. We devised a plan for how we would shop-drop them at a local grocery store heavily populated with Jewish patrons shopping for Passover.
Participants of the prank shared images of the matzo boxes on Facebook and Twitter where other social media users shared the images and discussed the authenticity of them. The prank was advanced further when we spread news of Jewel Osco’s Bobby Shmurda matzo box signing event.
Word of mouth of the Bobby Shmurda Shmura Matza Boxes spread around. A friend of mine asked me what I did over the weekened. I began to tell her about the prank by prefacing, “Do you know who Bobby Shmurda is?” She replied, “Yeah, he has a brand of matzo.” She told me a coworker was going around showing everyone at work the matzo pictures.
One participant described the project as, “Terrifying but fun.” She said it “pushed me out of my comfort zone but it was a cool experience, and I’m glad I did it.”
