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How can the core of the story of the guy who created Flamin' Hot Cheetos be true if he had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of Flamin' Hot Cheetos?

The real shocking part of the article is to find out that we (black kids growing up on the South Side of Chicago in the 80s) invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos because of our addiction to putting hot sauce on our chips. I honestly thought everybody did that, and didn't understand the early rise of the Flamin' Hots craze - I assumed there were always products like that available, because there were always local products like that available in Chicago.

> This is no different than how any other energetic, extroverted, outgoing, optimistic sales / marketing executive I’ve worked with would behave (let alone - a founder trying to pitch a VC). They’re not necessarily being dishonest - not everyone has an engineer or a scientist’s analytical memory and linear, organized view of cause and effect. And it’s not as if we’re talking about presenting evidence from a clinical study for a cancer drug here - the man is just telling a story, everyone knows that.

You could just shorten this to "who cares, it's just another bullshit artist."

> Around that time, Montañez began working on a line of products pitched specifically at the Latino market in the Los Angeles area: Sabrositas. Images that Montañez has posted to his Instagram account show that the Sabrositas line included Flamin’ Hot Popcorn, two types of Fritos — Flamin’ Hot and Lime and Chile Corn Chips — and a Doritos variety billed as buñuelito-style tortilla chips.

seems likely he was involved in different product lines with very similar names

Meaning that he saw a product that was being marketed to black people and thought that with a few changes, variants could be successfully marketed to Hispanics.

Those lines he came up with do not exist anymore, however, because I'm pretty sure Hispanic stores just import lime-chile brands from Mexico. They weren't an original idea, they're common.

Sabritas Turbos Flamas

https://www.amazon.com/Sabritas-Turbos-Snacks-Flamas-9-25oz/...

Hella good too.

There's dorito products out there that are extremely similar to Takis. I don't know the timeline though.

It isn't clear what he came up with. But they sell Flamin' Hot Popcorn and Fritos still. And Chile Lime Fritos in Mexico.

I don’t remember Flaming Hot Cheetos before the 2000s. As a snack enthusiast, I’d remember if it were widespread back then.

So it’s not out of the question that the guy sincerely believed his push for a latino-marketed chips in the early 90s was widely adopted and rebranded.

He’s also a bit of a story teller, so I feel like this is more a case of “Big Fish” rather than a “Talented Mr Ripley”.

Not trying to downplay the main point of your comment, but

> our addiction to putting hot sauce on our chips

sounds absolutely delicious, is it as simple as it sounds?

As long as you have a carry bag

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rQllAj8vXes

try also, popcorn

The core of his story is that he invented Flamin Hots. That isn’t true. The level of spin you’re putting on blatant falsehoods here is amazing. According to Frito Lay, he wasn’t even near the project. That’s not non-linear recollection, that’s just self serving mistruths.

Planet Money did an episode[0] on this tale recently and reached out to Frito-Lay. Their general response was that their record keeping back was not great and they don't have record of how exactly hot cheetos came to be. This seems to be directly at odds with this piece so I don't know that the truth is known.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2021/05/12/996228628/hot-cheetos

FTA:

> “None of our records show that Richard was involved in any capacity in the Flamin’ Hot test market,” Frito-Lay wrote in a statement to The Times, in response to questions about an internal investigation whose existence has not been previously disclosed. “We have interviewed multiple personnel who were involved in the test market, and all of them indicate that Richard was not involved in any capacity in the test market.

> One photograph, posted to Instagram in October 2019 but now deleted, shows four pieces of lined notebook paper, labeled “mild,” “reg,” “hot” and “extra hot,” with Cheetos piled on top of each. At the bottom of one, Montañez signed his name and wrote the date “1988.”

> In another post, now deleted, he wrote that he worked on the Doritos Salsa Rio flavor in 1998 — a product that first hit test markets in 1987, according to Advertising Age articles from that year.

>But Enrico did not work at Frito-Lay when Flamin’ Hot products were developed. His move to Frito-Lay was announced in December 1990, and he took over control at the beginning of 1991 — nearly six months after Flamin’ Hots were already out in the test market.

He is a fraud. End of.

They also said in that episode, although the CEO at the time has since passed away, another former CEO, Al Carey, has publicly credited him with inventing the flavor.

EDIT: Apparently that is also disputed, however.

TFA goes into this in detail. They asked Carey, he said Montañez came up with the flavour. Then they confronted Carey with the fact that the product pre-exists Montañez‘s involvement by years, and was developed by other people entirely. Carey replied that Montañez was essential in “reformulating” the flavour to make it the success it is today.

Then they asked the company about that, and Frito Lay responded that they’ve been buying the same seasoning from McCormick since the initial 1989 test market trials in the northeast that predate Montañez’s 1993-1994 Sabrositas pitch. Not only has it not been reformulated, Montañez entire story (not directly related in this article) of single handedly developing the flavouring to dunk unflavoured cheetos he took home with him for his pitch must be bullshit, since it’s entirely developed by and sourced from a third-party company.

His response:

> Carey said he was unsure how to account for that contradiction. “I’m sure if you went back into the Frito-Lay history, OK, there’s probably something in 1990 that was a test market on a spicy product,” he said. “I’ll be surprised if it was this same ingredient, but it could have been, I guess.”

“Ok sure, the entire product may already have been in test somewhere else and I’d be very surprised to learn it had all the same ingredients”, which it did. Incredible stuff. Probably just a coincidence he also gets co-speaking fees with Montañez in some appearances.

He claims that he invented the flaming hot line, which he didn't. There probably are sales people and founders who engage in a similar level "exaggeration". And there's a pretty good name for them: liars.

In my experience, bullshit doesn’t exist in isolation. If his boldest claim is bs, then likely many other things about his story are. I’d even go as far as to question whether his career advancement was enabled by this behavior.

A bit of rant, but people like this are toxic and need to be weeded out of organizations. I’ve seen too much of folks getting away with such behavior in my career.

>I’d even go as far as to question whether his career advancement was enabled by this behavior.

If it was then he's perfect for corporate America and fully deserves his position.

I read the entire article. Of course it doesn't say his "entire life story is pure bullshit". That's a straw man. But it includes a ton of evidence that his claim to have invented Flaming Hot Cheetos is bullshit, as well as lots of examples where he's changed his story many times over the years.