What’s the song of the summer? Is it “Espresso“? “Not Like Us“? “Hot to Go“? This writer would like to humbly submit another candidate: “We Bring the BOOM!” by A.J. and Big Justice, a Boca Raton, Florida-based father-and-son duo with flawlessly groomed eyebrows, heavy New Jersey accents, and a predilection for double-chocolate chunk cookies.
With its lyrics, “We bring the BOOM / That’s what we do / We bring the BOOM / We bring the BOOM to you” over a beat reminiscent of Run DMC’s “It’s Tricky,” “We Bring the Boom” is an origin story of sorts for A.J. Befumo and his 11-year-old son, Eric (known on TikTok as “Big Justice”), who are known for their food reviews as well as their vlogs from the big-box warehouse retail chain Costco. Released on July 3, the video is full of references to their lore: there are shoutouts to Costco food court items, gym routines, and of course, the “boom or doom” scale the two assign to food items they review on their page. There are even appearances from Eric’s older sister Ashley and his mom Erika, who is referred to on social media as “Mother of Big Justice.”
Over the past few months, the Befumos have built a devoted audience of more than 1.3 million followers on TikTok, largely thanks to their “Costco Guys” video from early last March, in which they declare their allegiance to the big-box warehouse retailer with sound bites like, “We’re Costco guys. Of course we go shopping while eating a chicken bake.” That video has more than 47 million views; a clip they posted a few days later, of them ranking Costco food court items on a scale of “boom” to “doom,” has 25 million views. (All of the items, including a chicken bake and a double chocolate chunk cookie, received a “boom,” though A.J. says he regrets his rating for Costco’s turkey sandwich. “That should’ve gotten a doom,” he says ruefully.)
In building their brand, A.J. and Big Justice have created their own internal iconography of sorts, such as catchphrases (“Meat! Alllllll meat!”) and recurring characters like the Rizzler (a child content creator known for his Rock-esque “rizz face”) and Cousin Angelo (who is, contrary to the nomenclature, not actually the Befumos’ blood relative).
“The world is awesome right now,” A.J. tells me over Zoom, during an interview with him and his son. “We come up with ideas, we make a video, we put it out. It’s been amazing. It’s been a boom!”
The Befumos, who lived in Colts’ Neck, New Jersey before moving to Boca Raton a few years ago, seem to have an inherent knack for virality. Starting when he was in college, A.J. wrestled professionally, going by the stage name “the American Powerchild Eric Justice.” (A.J.’s son, Eric, was named after Befumo’s wrestling persona.) Befumo left the ring in 2005, and until recently he worked full-time as a regional manager for a nationwide mortgage-lending company. “People can say whatever they want: that wrestling is fake, that it’s scripted,” Befumo says. “It beats the heck out of you. It takes a toll on your body.”
Nonetheless, A.J. continued to make social media on the side, at one point starting a family vlogging channel when Eric was three years old. But it never quite gained traction. “It wasn’t anything like what we’re doing now,” Befumo says. “It was just for us to remember what we did, have something to look back at and laugh. But it was a ton of work.”
In 2022, A.J. started a TikTok account to promote his mortgage lending services by appearing as a character he dubbed “Mortgage Muscles.” In these early videos, he’s far more subdued, standing in front of an American flag and giving advice on the housing market, interspersed with the occasional commentary on Marvel movies. But “it really wasn’t fun,” he says. “It felt a little forced.”
It wasn’t until Eric started getting involved that the channel really started to take off. “I just wanted to be in some videos because all my friends had YouTube channels at my school, and they had like 100 followers, and my dad had like, 1,000 followers,” he says excitedly. “So I thought it would be cool if I was on his channel.”
In late 2022, the duo did a video at the Boca Raton-based burger frachise Charm City, in which Eric enthusiastically introduces his father eating the “Big Sloppy,” a double-patty cheeseburger with fried egg on top. That video got 100,000 views. “And then my dad said, ‘This is a father-and-son channel now,'” Eric concludes.
Over the next year, A.J. and Eric gradually built a small but respectable following of a little more than 10,000 followers. That exploded in January 2024, when they uploaded a video of them shopping for dinner in Costco. It’s a star-making moment: A.J. starts weight-lifting with two jugs of milk, followed by Eric joyously dancing with a package of Premio sausages. The video now has about 7.9 million views. “We were like, wow, that’s what going viral is all about,” A.J. says.
The Befumos started increasingly centering their content around their Costco adventures, peaking with their ratings of the store’s food court items. (The “boom or doom” scale was inspired by another TikTok creator who uses a “Gas or Ass” food review system, with Eric adorably referring to the latter on Zoom as “the ‘A-S-S’ word.'”) Their followers regularly skewer their ratings system and accuse them of being too liberal with their booms. “We’re not gonna give something a doom if it’s good,” A.K. says. “Maybe we gotta start going to some worse places.”
At first glance, a giant big-box retailer may seem like an unlikely source of inspiration for a family TikTok account. But it must be said that the Befumos appear to genuinely love the shit out of Costco. When I ask Eric to explain its appeal, his face brightens. “It’s kind of like an awesome warehouse with a great food court and cheap food,” he says. “Like, you can get a quarter pound hot dog for $1.50, and you can also get a [20-ounce] soda.” (A.J. declined to specify whether the channel has a financial relationship with the brand, saying only that they are on “very, very good terms” with Costco.)
Still, the relationship with Costco hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. In March, the Befumos say, they were banned from a local store for about a month, which they attribute to elderly Boca Ratonites complaining about their tire-swinging, meat-tossing antics. “We make a lot of noise,” Big Justice says. “I’m not gonna say we don’t. We’re always yelling stuff like ‘DOUBLE CHUNK CHOCOLATE,’ picking stuff up, throwing it into the cart.” So A.J. appealed to Costco upper management, receiving an email from the company’s head legal counsel. “They were like, ‘hey Costco guys’ — so now, we’ve got Costco referring to us as ‘the Costco guys,'” A.J. says. “And they were like, we love what you’re doing.'” He says the brand gave them their full blessing to shoot provided they give advance notice to management and do not feature any staff or shoppers in their videos.
Most high-profile creators get a lot of hate, and the Befumos are no exception. The page regularly attracts vitriol from commenters who accuse it of being cringe, or attacking the Befumos for their physical appearance — including their well-manicured brows and lashes. “Who is your lash tech?,” or some variation thereof, is a comment that appears surprisingly frequently on their videos. “It’s all a gift from God,” A.J. says when I ask about such queries. “It’s the Italian in us.” (He does, however, cop to occasionally getting Botox.)
Of the negative comments, A.J. says, “I believe that there’s two ways in this world to build the biggest house. Number one is to build the biggest house. Number two is to build the smallest house, and try to tear down all the other houses. So if that’s how someone wants to build their house, by trying to tear down our house, we’re just going to keep building and bringing the happiness and the positivity and the big justice.”
The level of virality that the channel has reached — they now have a small staff of editors, as well as management in the form of digital talent representative Night Media — has also prompted the Befumos to consider pulling Eric out of school, or at least putting him in a much smaller private school. “School right now for Big Justice would be a distraction for everyone,” says A.J. “It would be a distraction for him, the other students, the teachers. Things are a lot different for us right now in our lives. So we’re looking into other options.”
Though Eric clearly adores making content with his father and being on-camera, he concedes that the level of attention he’s been getting has been a bit overwhelming. He says he’s been harangued by kids at school begging him to make videos, or incessantly playing clips from the family’s old YouTube channel, such as a voiceover of a trailer proclaiming “A.J. looooves meat.” “It was just a lot for me,” he says. “Because I have to do my work.” Once, he recounts, he was at the mall with his mom when he was mobbed by kids asking for photos. “It was a little bit scary,” he says. “Because there was kids pushing, shoving, grabbing me, taking pictures.”
A.J. says that while their newfound fame has required the family to make “adjustments,” he doesn’t have any major concerns. “To me, privacy is over. In the world we live in, there’s no such thing as privacy,” he says. “I think it’s about raising your children with confidence, [to] keep them protected and know that they’re loved and being watched over.” Of the family’s future, he says: “this is who we are now, this is the life we chose. So we’re all in.”
As they figure out how to recalibrate their lives, Eric, an avid baseball player, plans to participate in a worldwide home-run derby, which will be documented on social media; A.J. also plans to jump back in the wrestling ring at least one more time, and is working on scheduling a date. And of course, there’s more music: a track promoting A.J.’s wrestling comeback has already been recorded, and a remix for “We Bring the Boom” (this time, featuring appearances by characters like the Rizzler) will drop within the month.
In the interim, they’re enjoying the fruits of their newfound fame. Since releasing “We Bring the Boom” — a 1980s hip-hop-inspired track that resulted from an impromptu car-ride rap, A.J. says — the song has been remixed and duetted “hundreds” of times, and has been used as a walk-up song by local baseball team the Boca Beach Boys. The catchphrase has become so well-known, A.J. and Eric say, that a roller coaster operator during a recent trip to Universal Studios heralded their arrival by announcing the ride is “gonna be a big boom.” And indeed, right before we log off of Zoom, A.J. and Eric bid farewell on cue with a hearty, “BOOM!”
It is, admittedly, a bit of a surprise — but truth be told, it shouldn’t have been. After all, they bring the boom. That’s what they do. They bring the boom. They bring the boom to you.
