If you called a number posted around Guelph recently looking to participate in a Chewbacca impersonation contest, you were duped into helping pull off a prank.
Posters found in the south end of Guelph read 'Chewbacca Roar Contest!' asking people to call the phone number on the poster and give their best impression of Chewbacca to win $50. The poster said the contest was set to end Aug. 1st.
The number printed on the poster belongs to Guelph resident named Connal Fisher, who received 30 calls in the span of two weeks, and still gets the occasional call from an impersonator, in mid August.
"I started getting calls like the last week of July. At first, they wouldn't leave their name, they just called and screamed into my phone, and I was like, 'What was going on here?'" said Fisher. "The first call I had was at work and it was an Alberta number and they just screamed at me."
A coworker suggested to Fisher it was a prank from a kid, but later that night, Fisher received four more calls from a No Caller ID at 11 p.m.
"The same thing, screaming at me," said Fisher, "and on the last call they were like, 'Hey, I don't know if you made an enemy or you're being pranked, but there's posters all around with your number on it, and I was like, 'In which city?' and they were like, 'Guelph,' and I was like, 'Okay, what does the poster say?' and they said, 'A Chewbacca contest.'
"As soon as they said Chewbacca, I knew it was her."
The person behind the prank was Robyn Hamlyn, Fisher's girlfriend. Hamlyn said she came up with the prank after doing a bit of research online while recovering from COVID.
"He makes the best Chewbacca noise, that's a part of the joke," said Hamlyn.
The prank went viral in Australia in 2020, when a woman's ex-boyfriend used her phone number for a fake Chewbacca impersonation contest.
"His family is big on pranks, and we had discussed pranking his family, and when that didn't end up happening, I was like, 'You know what? I'm going to prank you,' and he said, 'Bring it on,'" said Hamlyn, "and I was like, 'Are you sure? Because when I prank, I go all in. It's not anything childish,' and he said, 'Bring it on.'"
Initially, her plan was to have different friends call Fisher and make Chewbacca noises. Unable to get enough people, she decided to put up posters and promote the call as a contest instead.
"I was rollerblading, and I was hanging them up in the trees around here, and putting them on cars," said Hamlyn, who put up almost 40 posters around the South end of Guelph and Stone Road. "I put it on all of the bus stops and like that, it was a great day."
After all the posters went up, someone took a photo of one of them and posted it onto a local Facebook group. Fisher said a coworker almost called him, but most of the calls from Chewbacca impersonators sounded like they came from young girls, teenagers and a couple of college students.
"There was one really good one, but they didn't leave their contact info," Fisher said about the impressions, "The rest just kind of sounded like screams of pain."
For Hamlyn, the prank was a way to procrastinate from studying for exams and gave her something fun to do.
"The cheapest prank I've ever done," adds Hamlyn, noting it cost four dollars to print the posters.
After learning they came from posters promoting a Chewbacca contest, Fischer confronted Hamlyn about the prank.
"So I called her and I was like, 'Just wondering, by chance, did you go around and put posters up?' and she said, 'Maybe,'" said Fisher, noting he is still thinking of a prank to get back at Hamlyn.
"It was too funny, it's the prank that just keeps on pranking," said Hamlyn. "I'm just so glad that he took it well."
"I told my family and they all gave her massive respect for it," adds Fisher.
The couple, who have been dating for a few months, said anyone looking to prank their partner should make sure they're okay with pranks first and give them fair warning it's coming. After Hamlyn's final exam, she said their next date is going to be taking any remaining posters.
"I have a follow up prank, but we're going to do it on his family because I feel bad," said Hamlyn.
