12 ms·
The man who didn’t invent Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2021)
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoMarketing is complicated. He took a defunct brand and found it's demographic, and the rest is history. Lots of things get written by little people trying to take the air out of famous/talented people. It's pretty easy - "They're just human!", "They technically didn't do everything alone!" Nothing to see here.
- ChainOfFools 4y agoI find your choice of wording very telling here. Montañez is, by your description, being taken down by "little people" who accuse him of being, of all things, a mere flawed mortal like themselves. And although you skirted the obvious implication by referencing his story as that not of a "big" man or even a great one but, instead, "famous" or "talented", indicating that you sympathize with the simplistic great man theory of history.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoDid that add anything to the conversation? Is there something more to say? Dissecting others' comments is a low-traction form of commenting. I like to stick to saying what I think. And yes, this man is self-admittedly a regular guy who accomplished something impressive through daring and courage.
- canadianfella 4y ago[dead]
- autoexec 4y agoMontañez is apparently a liar who was once a marketing director and is now heavily marketing himself and his made up story. That sort of thing really does take daring and courage but I'm not sure I'd call it 'accomplishing something impressive', especially considering that the lies were found out and exposed.
- actionfromafar 4y agoAll I have to do is divine from what I know of you. Are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet, or his enemy’s? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I’m not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool; you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me!
- bigbacaloa 4y agoMarketing is institutionalization of the ethics and honesty of the proverbial used car salesman. It's sad to see how much of the population celebrates it.
- dcx 4y agoThis seems unnecessarily reductive. Yes, like any tool, marketing can be used for evil. And people often associate marketing with scummy advertising or spin (which often actually fall under sales or PR). But at its best marketing creates an incredible amount of value. If you actually study it, the discipline of marketing is actually about things like (1) the rigorous search for product-market fit, many decades before this was popular with tech startups, (2) finding ways to efficiently target and inform audiences about goods and services which absolutely add value to their lives, and which can often be extremely challenging (e.g. everyone hates thinking about death, but life insurance can be ridiculously important for your dependents), (3) developing clear, stable, predictable anchors at a company level, which people can trust and build mental shorthand for, at longer timeframes - we all have expectations for what Apple products are "about", for example. These are all absolutely vital market functions.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Talanes 4y agoI mean, the timeline looks more like he saw something similar to something he made get much more popular, and then started shifting facts about his own story to match the more popular product.
- naijaboiler 4y agothis seems to be truth. And like all good story-tellers, which he is, he exaggerate a bit. Maybe more than a bit. His stories contain lots of truths, with lots and lots of exaggerations.
- elefanten 4y agoIt seems you didn't read the article. There was no defunct brand that Montanez revitalized. He was involved in some marketing efforts and may have played a role in a derivative "Flaming" line product and some other Latino-targeted flavors. But the confirmed lies that he chose to spread, with the bumbling help of his mentor (who clearly has personal commitments to the community the lies are most meant to appeal to), are beyond excusable. There's nothing to hand-wave here. It's the nakedly cynical, anti-social effort of an egotistical con man. It should be shamed off the air, the movie should be shamed out of production and their names should live on in infamy as pathetic liars. Richard Montanez and Al Cary, the pathetic liars who think you're all chumps. To do anything else is to contribute to the degradation of vital social fabric.
- skc 4y agoI've only ever read about it this guy on HN.
- paulcole 4y agoIf there's one thing HN loves more than celebrating someone's accomplishments, it's dunking on someone who faked their accomplishments.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoEh, no way to really know the truth. When I had a corporate job, I wrote a proposal and a new manager essentially took credit for it and botched the implementation so badly I didn't want my name associated with it. Life frequently looks like Pinky and the Brain where who really did what is unclear.
- devbent 4y ago1996, I posted on the AOL Star Trek DS9 forum that the Federation should lay mines in the worm hole. 13yr old me was shocked to see the Federation laying mines in the worm hole a year later. :D
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoOmega molecule bomb borg space! Build a firewall around that section of the universe. Let that hegemonizing swarm burn itself out while trapped in jello.
- goodcanadian 4y agoOne thing I have learned in life is that there is no such thing as an original idea. Ideas have their time. If it is truly a good idea (and even if it is not), someone has already thought of it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't credit people for the idea, but at the same time, just because you thought of it, doesn't mean that is where the final product came from.
- screye 4y agoI've seen this up close during my time in ML research. I'd often jokingly mention an idea, only for someone to get a state-of-the-art paper out of the exact same idea within a year of that. It annoyed me at first, but with time, I realized that this was a rather familiar occurrence. Many top labs are tight-lipped even when talking about peripheral topics, because so many of their peers are within months of reaching the same answer, and even the smallest hint might lead to a peer getting there first. My conversations with top researchers indicate that all research in ML is about 'getting there first' rather than producing something that requires a mythical epiphany. It does take away from the glamor of it a little bit. If Salieri had been months away from composing Mozart's best work himself, that would have taken away from the timelessness of his work.
- krmbzds 4y agohttps://archive.is/h8MiK https://archive.is/h8MiK
- blowski 4y agoSomebody decided to put chilli powder on a processed chip, and then somebody else has taken the credit, including having a film made about them. Thankfully, it seems like we're back to having Slow News Mondays.
- throw_away_8080 4y agoI know right :) All I need now is a Show HN of an API for something that shouldn't be on the internet. Or a cat rescued from a tree on channel 9.
- batch12 4y agoI tried to make this-- an collector of only local news.. but the results were very boring. I still have the domain waiting in the next inspiration...
- felipemnoa 4y agoJust wait till you find out that people put chili on all sorts of things. Heck, the Aztecs were putting chili on hot chocolate before there was even a Mexico. Those crazy Mexicas (not a misspelling) would put chili on anything! Something tells me that they were putting chili on tortilla chips even back then. Crazy right?! Now put that in your pipe and smoke it!
- nsxwolf 4y agoFlamin' Hot Cheetos really are special, though. There's always been spicy chips and spicy this or that. These have a really nice acidic flavor, and just a lot of complexity I don't know how to describe. They're fantastic.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- akiselev 4y agoTortilla chips are a 20th century invention and the Mexica wouldn’t be introduced to frying until the Spanish conquest.
- mkl 4y agoThe story: 780 points, 4 years ago, 356 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20227175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20227175 406 points, 2 years ago, 261 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25510351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25510351 The reality: 336 points, 2 years ago, 145 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27173859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27173859 I guess HN prefers a good story about rags-to-riches underdogs!
- chaostheory 4y agoEveryone does which is why Frito Lays isn’t fighting this myth very hard. Even though it was a complete lie, it’s still good for their brand.
- nsxwolf 4y agoI imagine they don't want the headache. Confronting this guy with his lie could get very messy from a legal and PR perspective.
- subsubzero 4y agoI remember when this story(the lie) was first circulating there was one thing that didn't really make sense to me, although the person who said they created it took inspiration from hispanic foods he grew up eating, flamin' hot cheetos has a cayenne flavor which to me reminds me of the US south and Tabasco sauce and nothing like anything anything from Mexico(besides that its spicy).
- sdenton4 4y agogarage : startup :: mom's kitchen : novel junkfood
- ProfessorLayton 4y agoWait what? The Tabasco pepper literally originated from Mexico, and it's named after a state.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoThe one thing i know is that the true creatives are busy with creating new things, not with collecting past glory and building rambling, halls of fame to themselves. Thats for hasbeens and wannabees. As soon as somebody starts tuning that "I was, i have been, i ve done" harp, im out of the conversation. Most boring people to engage with and thus usually hearded into conversation ghettos, were they can one up one another for all eternity without interfering. Once you become that sort of silverback, all growth is over and only slow decline awaits, while beating your chest.
- sfmike 4y agoagree but disagree. this could be an indicator, albeit if someone is in an epoch in their life where they feel uninspired or even a bit depressed, even as one of the greatest of all time, they too can have these sorts of one liners. It is partially a good indicator though at least of them being post success and now sort of suffering from their skill induced ego.
- thiscatis 4y ago“Yeah totally Dr. Einstein, cool story and lecture but what new things have you created recently?”
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoHe valiantly fought against Quantummechanisc to the bitter end? Which was a miss, but way more interesting, because it kept that cheeky oppenheimer and his entanglement from a distance in check. Which is actually quite something, that marks actual legends. Even the defeats and ongoing retreat battles are more interesting then the "I-bring-my-own-pedestal-wherever-i-go" stories.
- rcme 4y agoWas it a miss? I think it’s too early to say.
- gryfft 4y ago
- ALittleLight 4y agoThere's a lot of alpha in lying.
- suction 4y ago[dead]
- NiceAndWarm 4y agoUniversal hyperintelligence ChatGPT disagrees with this article, saying: "The credit for inventing Flamin' Hot Cheetos goes to Richard Montañez. He was a former Frito-Lay janitor who came up with the idea for the spicy snack in the early 1990s. Montañez developed the recipe and pitched the idea to Frito-Lay executives, who eventually gave the product the green light. Flamin' Hot Cheetos went on to become a huge success and are now one of the company's most popular snacks."
- justrealist 4y agoThis is sort of interesting, because normally people want GPT to suppress fringe views (ex, the vast body of evidence and literature is pro-vaccine, and they don't want it to promote low-evidence anti-vaccine views). But in this case, the fringe story is, by consensus on HN, the correct one despite the mindshare. How do you generalize this principle?
- bazoom42 4y ago> How do you generalize this principle? Look at evidence rather than at how many people belive something?
- justrealist 4y agoPeople don't do this.
- paleotrope 4y agoNeither does GPT
- ddj231 4y agoI guess the question is whether GPT is supposed to be an emulation of personhood or simply a software tool. Ex. I don’t think we’d want a software tool that lies, steals or cheats despite the fact that people do this
- 4y ago
- matthewdgreen 4y agoA lie can go halfway round the world while the truth sits behind a paywall.
- spirit557 4y agogood one there
- djoldman 4y ago(2021)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- astura 4y agoWhile he didn't invent hot Cheetos, he did go from janitor to marketing director, which is already an amazing accomplishment. It's a shame he's making shit up, because it ruins his own legacy. There's so much money involved he might actually believe his own story now. >Montañez has built a lucrative second career out of telling and selling this story, appearing at events for Target, Walmart, Harvard and USC, among others, and commanding fees of $10,000 to $50,000 per appearance.... second memoir.... biopic... Both the book and the movie were sold after bidding wars He probably makes more money as "fake hot Cheetos inventor" than "Frito Lays executive." There's so little integrity involved when there is so much money. >The producers of his biopic, despite being informed of problems by Frito-Lay in 2019, announced a cast for the movie in early May.
- MavisBacon 4y agoand the biopic just premiered at SXSW. amazing. https://www.chron.com/food/article/flamin-hot-movie-17843954.php https://www.chron.com/food/article/flamin-hot-movie-17843954...
- Reason077 4y ago> "It's a shame he's making shit up" I guess. But being good at "making shit up" is probably much of what got him where he is today!
- astura 4y agoGood point.
- 3minus1 4y ago> he might actually believe his own story now I was wondering this but this section from the article is fairly damning > One photograph, posted to Instagram in October 2019 but now deleted, shows four pieces of lined notebook paper, labeled “mild,” “reg,” “hot” and “extra hot,” with Cheetos piled on top of each. At the bottom of one, Montañez signed his name and wrote the date “1988.” > In another post, now deleted, he wrote that he worked on the Doritos Salsa Rio flavor in 1998 — a product that first hit test markets in 1987, according to Advertising Age articles from that year. He literally fabricated evidence, writing the date 1988 when we know at this point it's impossible. And then deleted the posts. Like someone else said, there's definitely something inspirational about his rags to riches story, but seeing this I can't help but lose respect for him.
- Reason077 4y agoAnyone else struggle to find the proper (crunchy) Flamin' Hot Cheetos in the UK? I often see the crunchy cheese ones, and the flamin' hot "puff" kind, but it's just not the same. It's just "meh" without the dense, crunchy texture of true Cheetos. If Flamin' Hot Cheetos are so famous, why are they so hard to find?!
- bookofjoe 4y agohttps://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=flamin%27+hot+cheetos&crid=36EWT97FK8CZU&sprefix=flamin+hot+cheetos%2Caps%2C153&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=flamin%27+hot+cheetos&crid=36EW...
- kellengreen 4y agoThe American Store in London carries has them, for a considerable markup.
- Reason077 4y agoOh yeah, I meant at normal prices. Not imported ones at crazy markups on Amazon or at specialty stores! I’m sure I used to be able to find UK/EU made Flamin’ Hot fairly easily in random corner shops, but now they only seem to stock the cheese ones and “twisted” puffs.
- urbandw311er 4y agoI liked this story a lot until I was about 1,000 words in and realised there were still 4,500 words left.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nemo44x 4y agoThe funny thing is it doesn't really bother me. I'll probably just memory hole this apparent fact and one day when one of my kids buys a bag I'll recount this story to them as something inspirational.
- CodeWriter23 4y agoNote that the article does not refute him working for Frito Lay as a janitor. Somehow he got to the C-Suite.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]