Tag: savory

Cheetos Bag of Bones

A black and white illustration of Bag of Bones Cheetos, an Indestructible Food.

“An invention for the ages.”

I don’t like to brag, but I know the gal who INVENTED Cheetos Bag of Bones. She’s a copywriter named @oh_that_sarah and she’s full of great ideas. (Although, I don’t know how you top the creation of the best Halloween snack food of all time.) Anyway, here’s the story of how Bag of Bones came to be:

Sarah started her advertising career at an agency in San Francisco, and her first assignment was to work on the social media accounts for Cheetos. (You didn’t think Chester Cheetah wrote his OWN Tweets, did you?!) It should have been a mundane learning experience, but the hands of fate had other things in store. You see, Sarah and her partner were ambitious, and they kept bringing their creative director ideas he never asked for and certainly didn’t want. Rejections piled up like autumn leaves, but the pair was undeterred.

Their persistence paid off (for all of us) when one day Sarah waltzed into her boss’s office with yet another zany idea. “Hey, what if we made White Cheddar Cheetos in the shape of bones for Halloween?” There was a record scratch and time froze. Nothing would ever be the same.

The boss loved the idea, and soon it was on its way to Frito Lay for review. They ALSO loved the idea, and a year later, Bag of Bones Cheetos were on store shelves. 

This new product was great for everyone: Frito Lay got a seasonal hit snack and some cultural relevancy. Cheetos fans got to build little Cheeto skeletons with which to scare their roommates. And Sarah’s family got to go to Walmart, buy something that came directly out of her brain, and then eat it.

If there’s a moral to this story, it must be that having a lot of ideas will eventually lead to something mind-bogglingly rad. And that we owe @oh_that_sarah a debt of gratitude for expanding the Cheetos universe. Happy Halloween, everyone!

Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix

The great cornbread debate…

Cornbread is, and has been important in America since the beginning. Native Americans were using corn in a million ways when colonists came here, and the inception of a European-style bread came quickly thereafter. Corn was plentiful, cheaper than wheat, and a good way to fill up bellies. Corn!

As time went on, regional differences emerged. There were people who said that cornbread was a little bit sweet, and people who said that cornbread was not sweet at all. I always heard that this was a Northern/Southern thing. But it is way more complex than that.

With the advent of industrial milling, sweeter white corn was passed over in favor of cheaper, less tasty yellow corn. So families that couldn’t afford the more expensive, but naturally sweet white cornmeal, tended to add sweetener to their cornbread recipes. This brings us to Jiffy mix. Which was invented in the 1930s to help poor families put delicious baked goods on the table. The brand was made to be cheap. And easy. That was the whole point. And, you guessed it, the mix had an awful lot of sugar in it.

This is the part where I say that nothing about food and class is simple. That we absorb our tastes from our families. And that means that your comfort foods lag behind your financial position by at least a generation.

PS: If you want to read an interesting piece about the cornbread divide and race, Kathleen Purvis wrote a great one for the Charlotte Observer a few years back. A lot of these facts were learned from her.

PPS: If you want to get a 12-pack of Jiffy baking mixes for $6!!! go to jiffymix.com (Not a paid endorsement, because I’m not really anybody. I just like Jiffy.)