Weird-shaped Cheeto won a jackpot for this couple

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A Canadian couple’s snack time turned out to be pretty lucrative as they found a man-shaped Cheeto which earned them a prize of 27,000 Canadian dollars (20,500 US dollars).

The husband Dwight Parsons would not have gotten the money had his wife Leverna not shouted “don’t eat it” to save the chip from his mouth.

“We had just put on a movie and went and got some snacks, as you would,” Leverna told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

Leverna Parsons’s winning entry is enshrined in the online Cheetos Museum. /Photo via cheetosmuseum.ca

The couple said they just thought it was great to find a weird-shaped Cheeto looking like a man running with a football and didn’t realize it might actually be worth something.

Mrs Parsons kept it in a plastic baggy until a week later her daughter noticed details about a contest printed on the bag when having some Cheetos.

The contest, which was held by Frito-Lay brand Cheetos’s online museum from May 7 to July 1 for Canadians, called on customers to send in photos of rare Cheetos worthy of being curated in the museum.

Other weekly winners in the contest. /Photo via cheetosmuseum.ca

Weekly winners were eligible for a prize of 2,000 Canadian dollars, and the top four winners would be selected as finalists for the public to vote on to win the 25,000-dollar grand prize.

The family registered the “little orange guy” with the title “The Running Man” and sent it to the company for verification. Soon after, their active imagination paid off.

They got a check for 2,000 dollars first as a winning weekly entry, and then won the final vote unexpectedly. “The Running Man” outcompeted other weekly winners, including a Cheeto shaped like a brain and one like a sitting flamingo.

Submitted rare Cheeto collections in 2016. /Photo via cheetosmuseum.com

For years, social media has been ablaze with fans suggesting that Cheetos sticks resemble something, be it dinosaurs, orange snacks or Justin Bieber. A Cheeto that looked like the gorilla Harambe (tragically killed in 2016 at the Cincinnati Zoo) sold for nearly 100,000 US dollars on eBay last year.

Basing their decisions on the aesthetics and creativity of the submissions, the campaign not only helps the company boost fan engagement, but drive sales, since contest entrants usually need the product to participate.