The spicy story behind Flamin’ Hot Cheetos

From "Crunchy Flamin’ Hot” to “Crunchy Flamin’ Hot Limón,” all the way to “Crunchy XXtra Flamin’ Hot,” there’s no single best flavor of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. They are all perfect in their own way.

And none of them would have been possible without one man – Richard Montañez, the alleged inventor of the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto and subject of the Eva Longoria-directed film Flamin’ Hot, out today on Hulu and Disney+.

We’ll come back to that "alleged" in a sec.

⏪ Origin story: Flamin’ Hot tells Montañez’s story exactly as it’s written in his memoir, A Boy, a Burrito, and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive. The book follows Montañez as he rises through the ranks of Frito-Lay from a janitor to the company’s head of multicultural marketing. And at some point in there, he invented the stain-your-fingers snack that’s since been outlawed at several US school districts (based on research that suggests the snack creates a brain response similar to that in people addicted to drugs).

• There was just one little issue. When Flamin’ Hot went into production in 2021, an LA Times investigation was published claiming that, according to interviews with over a dozen Frito-Lay employees, Montañez wasn’t actually involved in the invention or testing of Flamin’ Hot.
• But that didn’t stop Longoria and her team from continuing. According to one of the film’s writers, Linda Yvette Chávez, the film is not meant to be a biopic, but a "Rocky for Latino Americans" underdog story about “how complicated it is to be a person of color in this country.”

🍿 Now in theaters: Flamin’ Hot isn’t the only movie coming out this weekend. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts debuts across the country today.