My “For You Page,” or FYP, on TikTok had recommended a filter that generates a tarot card featuring the sunglasses-wearing mascot for Cheetos snacks, Chester Cheetah. I smashed the filter button so hard that I cracked a nail.
As a Millennial, I was raised by television and marketing departments, so tarot decks that feature things like Lisa Frank characters feel made for me. I’m also an amateur scholar in the ways of Americana, and Cheetos are an old American snack. Developed in 1948 by Charles Elmer Doolin – this is a real name of a real person – Cheetos have been a longtime international bestseller amongst snack foods.
The Cheetos Cajun Cheddar tarot bundle, currently out of stock at Walmart [Frito-Lay]
In 2020, following many iterations of Cheetos snacks and flavors, the Frito-Lay brand expanded into the boxed mac and cheese market. Alongside flavors such as Cheesy Bacon and Flamin’ Hot, Cheetos has introduced a flavor only sold at Walmart, “Cajun Cheddar,” whose packaging is accented with a fleur de lis and tagged “Dangerously Cheesy in the Big Easy.” An actual physical copy of the Cheetos tarot deck is sold exclusively as a bundle with the mac and cheese, so if you want to get these cards outside of Wal-Mart, you’re getting dinner too.
I have never been to New Orleans, but I have been to Walmart. I’ve lived in the sorts of rural communities where everybody relies on Walmart, even the Pagans. (Especially the Pagans, honestly.) I have a personal vendetta against Walmart – my father worked in their warehouses when I was a kid, and the pay was bad and the benefits worse. But Walmart is where the everyman collects: it’s where you get the fishing line for weekends, the baked goods for parties, and the candles for the altar. And now, Walmart has branched out from Amish romance novels and into divination tools featuring the likeness of one of the more recent inductees to the pantheon of false kitchen gods – Chester Cheetah.
Chester Cheetah was introduced in 1986, past the marketing window of 60s and 70s where we got Uncle Ben and the Hamburger Helper glove Lefty.He’s the cool guy of food mascots. Slinky and seductive, Chester whispers that cheese can be dangerous. Now I see his face looking up at me to predict the future, a king on his throne, his paw pads dyed like a witch’s in a horror movie. If Chester told me he didn’t bite, I wouldn’t believe him.
Lauren Parker with the Mac ‘n Cheese Magician from the Cheetos tarot deck [courtesy]
I have not historically been a Cheetos lover (I don’t like dusty fingers) but a big part of that is class based. As many hours as I spent in Walmart, buying cheap wine and cheap candles for the ancestors, I understood the stigma of Cheetos. It’s food for poor people and stoners, the scarlet letter become a wet, orange finger. It’s a shorthand for cheapness. Knowing the ways that classism has crapped in my own head, I expected to review the whole bundle with the deck. When I opened the box, I was expecting cheaply-printed tarot cards in plastic chinzy packaging like any other throw in. But the cards actually come in a really lovely storage box, and the cards are laminated so that you can eat them with all sorts of Cheeto dust on your fingers.
But there’s an additional layer to the deck, too – it’s interactive with the food.
In addition to divination messages that play on the Major Arcana, the deck comes with a booklet that gives instructions for a game of chance – “Cajun, It’s in the Cards” – to upgrade the macaroni through card pulls. It’s a combination of kitchen witchery and divination. I pull a three card spread as I boil six cups of water: the Messenger of Cheesiness (Death), the Fiery Fool (the Fool, of course), and the Cheetos Paw (the Hermit). These cards recommend the following changes to the recipe:
- Brown the butter before adding the milk and cheese powder
- Add pickled jalapenos
- Add a garnish like lemon zest
As I’m double double toil and troubling by browning butter and mixing a powdered cheese sauce in a separate pot, I consider that this is the most thought I’ve ever put into a boxed mac and cheese. I read the entire tarot pamphlet as I wait for the macaroni to soften. Some of the food recommendations are more brazen than others but none will make it less tasty.
I crush up some of the cajun Cheetos with a mortar and pestle and dump them on top. It’s the fanciest boxed mac I’ve ever had.
The Cheetos tarot deck, a bowl of the associated mac ‘n cheese, and an honest-to-gods mortar and pestle [courtesy]
The tarot deck is cute and dangerously cheesy (wink). The artwork is done by RJ Ruano, a trans digital artist who explores gender and identity through his work.
I was surprised that the Pepsi Corporation, which owns Frito-Lay and Cheetos, would back this project, considering they have a fairly mixed political donation history. In 2021 the corporation donated more than 12 times as much to GOP-affiliated PACs and organizations as Democratic groups, though it also donated to 95 individual Democratic politicians as opposed to only 26 Republicans. The overwhelming majority of those PAC donations were to support the extremely anti-LGBTQ Florida Republican legislature. In 2022, however, their donations were more evenly split, with PepsiCo actually making slightly more contributions to Democratic PACs than Republicans, including $45,000 to Democratic PACs in California. They also took flack in 2009 for a pro-Gay stance that got them (meagerly) boycotted.
After spending entirely too much time staring at the donation histories of a major corporation, I arrive at the conclusion that corporations cannot save us, but they can sometimes employ us and give us snacks.
Ruano’s artwork is interesting and highly interpretive. The Magician is perfect, pulling in a trickster element that works really well for the card. The High Priestess becomes the Sly Prince, with many familiar symbols from the original card. The aforementioned Messenger of Cheesiness has got queer anarchist vibes all over it, with black flags and skateboards, though I’m not sure I would have gotten the Death card out of it.
That is a downside of the deck from an actual tarot perspective, but this is really fun content marketing. Would I use this deck to read professionally? No. But would I bust it out with a bag of Cheetos and a perfectly aged – that is, flat and room temperature, ideally left in a hot car overnight – Mountain Dew with a splash of whiskey in it? Absolutely.
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.