Jack Black’s SNL Cheetos sketch is brand spoof brilliance

Over the past decade, we’ve seen Cheetos and its Flamin’ Hot flavor brand pop up in some fun and unexpected places. There was the Spotted Cheetah pop-up NYC restaurant in 2017. The Hollywood pop-up with chef Roy Choi in 2018 called the Cheetos Flamin’ Hot Spot. A taco at Taco Bell. There was a Forever 21 apparel collection in 2019. A nail polish with Dipwell. A Dr. Squatch soap. And, of course, a pair of Crocs. Parent company Frito-Lay has sprinkled Flamin’ Hot across products like Doritos, Ruffles, Lay’s, Funyuns, Smartfood, and even in a limited edition of Mountain Dew.

But Jack Black escalated things to previously unpredictable levels on Saturday Night Live this weekend, in a spoof that imagined Flamin’ Hot in an entirely unprecedented product category. 

Even Chester Cheetah was disgusted with the Preparation H collab. 

The Cheetos SNL Canon

This is a more-than-worthy addition to the Cheetos SNL canon. The brand has been spoofed and referenced several times over the years. In 2019, Woody Harrelson played a man who opened a World’s Biggest Cheeto Museum.

And of course, there is 2017’s brilliant “Pitch Meeting” sketch, in which the misguided definition of brand purpose is taken to the extreme. 

We may be cresting peak brand collab, with so many constantly rolling out that it takes the most wild and wildly creative to even make a ripple. Liquid Death has become a master at navigating this, but for so many brands these efforts come and go with little fanfare. 

Cheetos may be the perfect brand through which to satirize broader brand culture. It’s beloved in a way that is self-aware and silly. It has utilized brand collabs and limited products cleverly enough that absurd spoofs are just this close to actually being believable.

Frito-Lay has not yet responded to a request for comment on whether this was an official brand partnership with the show. But I hope it is. Just as Kraft Heinz is mulling the potential of its unofficial role in Seth Rogen’s show The Studio, Cheetos extending its self-awareness and sense of humor in this way would be an incredibly spicy way to evolve how brands play in entertainment.

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