It’s known as ‘Cheetozard’, the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto in the shape of a Pokémon which has now sold for $87,840 via online auction. The snack, which admittedly has a very odd shape and looks a bit like the dragon Pokémon Charizard, went up for sale on the website Goldin on February 10. After going viral, it quickly began to attract surprisingly high bids, before selling on Sunday, March 2 for the outrageous $88k figure.
If you’ve even a passing interest in Pokémon or trading card games, you’re probably aware of the ridiculous sums the most expensive rare Pokémon cards can fetch on the market. Collectibles surrounding the brand have a lot of prestige, but even we didn’t know food items shaped like the nostalgic Pocket Monsters could see the same results. Needless to say, we’re going to be eating everything much more carefully from now on.
The snack was originally in the possession of 1st and Goal Collectibles, a collectibles store which claims to have had Cheetozard for five years. The store’s Instagram account shared pictures of the Pokémon, documenting the process of moving it between different “enclosures” (slightly different sized plastic cases) in the lead up to a sale in late 2024 to online card seller Arena Club. It was then won in a giveaway, presumably by the unknown person who put it up for auction on Goldin (unless it changed hands before that).
The fact that a Cheeto was able to sell for close to $88k (the winning bid was actually $72,000, with a 22% charge, the ‘Buyer’s Premium’ added on by Goldin) is obviously astounding. It’s a case study in the power of nostalgia that should surely be studied by marketers.
It helps, of course, that of all the Pokémon this snack could’ve looked like, the one it bore resemblance to was Charizard. There are plenty of popular Pokémon, but the best Charizard Pokémon cards go for hundreds of dollars, more even than rare versions of the franchise’s main mascot Pikachu.
Here at Wargamer, we’re wondering if this could be a repeat scheme. With $72,000 you could buy 24,000 bags of Cheetos, or about 960,000 individual Cheetos. We have no statistics on the frequency of Cheeto-deformities, but it seems like pretty good odds that one or two of them would look like a famous Pokémon. Could this be an infinite money machine?
Even though it’s an enormous figure, this is not actually the most expensive Cheeto sold in the past decade. In 2017, a Cheeto shaped like the ill-fated gorilla Harambe changed hands to the tune of close to $100,000.
For more Pokémon TCG stories, check out our guide to all legendary Pokémon and the best Pokémon cards.