The popular snack-food brand, Cheetos, is hosting a 10-week contest in which it will give 10 lucky winners a $10,000 cash prize, out of whom a grand champion will be chosen and awarded an additional $50,000. To earn all that cheddar, participants need to be on the lookout for shapes in their Cheetos the same way a child would look for shapes in the clouds. When one finds a noteworthy Cheeto, they are to upload a photo of it to www.cheetosmuseum.com where it will showcased in the community Cheetos gallery. According to www.simplemost.com, contestants can upload a maximum of 50 entries per day where they will be presented to a panel of judges and potentially be selected for to be a $10,000 recipient, and entered as a finalist for the $50,000 winner. $10,000 winners will be selected every Monday up until Aug. 15 when the company will announce the grand prize winner, according to www.simplemost.com The entries will be judged based on three categories, according to www.simplemost.com:1. Visual interest: “How unique is your Cheetos snack and how well does it match your description?”2. Buzz worthiness: “How buzz-worthy is your Cheetos snack, title and description?”3. Creativity: “How creative is your title and description of the snack?”The first $10,000 winner was announced June 30 on the Cheetos Facebook page via video, where one family can be seen brandishing a Cheeto which they say resembles the Statue of Liberty. Some other popular posts on the Cheetos museum website include animals, a human heart, and a half-foot long Cheetos twist which the uploader claims, “has been in our kitchen drawer for approximately 10 years.”Jordan Haider, a recent computer science graduate from Utah, recalled a Cheeto he felt would have been worthy of winning the competition, “I found a Cheeto in the summer of '09 that was a spitting image of a trumpet. It brought tears to my eyes when the time came to eat it. Having the knowledge I have now, I wish I could go back in time and vacuum seal said Cheeto, making me 10k.”When asked if knowledge of the contest would change his Cheeto consumption, Haider said, he would be “bathing in Cheetos from now until the end of the competition.”Cody Bench, a sophomore from Texas studying international cultural studies, offered this advice for fortune seekers: “Think in the perspective of a judge. They want to see something they haven’t seen before; don’t be a cheeseball about it.”Cheetos is also hosting a second competition at the same time, reminiscent to Willy Wonka and his golden tickets. Www.simplemost.com reported that Cheetos has placed ten different game pieces into bags of Cheetos, which Frito Lay said in a press release, “Represent specific Cheetos Museum shapes, hidden inside specially marked bags.” In that same release, the company announced, “The 10 lucky fans to uncover these pieces of art will win an ultimate family vacation worth $10,000 to one of the cities represented by the game pieces.”
Writer: Alex Maldonado
