Cheetos are a variety of potato chip- a corn chip, really. They are made with corn and cheese and are one of the more individual and delicious styles of chip. Chester Cheetah is the mascot for Cheetos. He speaks in a mid-Atlantic accent. Before Chester was the Cheetos Mouse who spoke the slogan, “Hail Chee-sar.” Pretty cheesy, right? The interpunct, the little dot that existed between Chee and tos, was dropped in the mid aughties. Because of a pork enzyme in these chips, Cheetos are tref. The crunchy ones are fried, the puffed are not, and as a result are less delicious.
Frito-Lay created Cheetos in the late ’40s. Fritos began in the ’30s, when Elmer Doolin paid $100 for the recipe after trying a bag of corn chips while eating lunch in San Antonio. He expanded his business hugely over the next ten years. The original ingredients are corn oil, whole corn, and salt. Today PepsiCo owns Fritos and Frito-Lay after a 1965 merger. Today Fritos corn chips are one of the more original chips you can find in automated retail vending machines. The barbecue ones are especially tasty.
Both Cheetos and Fritos are corn snacks, but they are very different from each other. The ingenuity of Americans, such as Mr. Doolin, contributed to these delicious snacks we find in custom vending machines everywhere.