A has proven rather profitable for one seller.
On Sunday, a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto shaped like the Pokémon Charizard for $87,840. Nicknamed “Cheetozard,” the viral fire-breathing-creature-shaped snack was sold through Goldin, an online auction house specializing in trading cards, collectibles and other memorabilia.
Cheetozard is a three-inch long Flamin’ Hot snack mounted to a custom Pokémon card encapsulated in a clear card storage box.
Bidding for the item started at $250 on Feb. 10 at 8:10 PM, and 60 bids later, the winning bid of $72,000 was made on Sunday at 1:42 a.m., according to Goldin. The extra $15,840 on the final price is the auction house’s 22% “buyer’s premium” fee.
Goldin declined to share who purchased the pricy Cheeto but says that people from all over the world visited its website to watch the auction, which ran for nearly a month.
“Goldin specializes in rare and one-of-a-kind collectibles, and the Cheetozard is exactly this,” Dave Amerman, Goldin’s head of consignment, told TODAY.com. “Part of what makes this item so fun and unique is that it bridges two fandoms — Pokémon and Cheetos.”
On Sunday, in a Instagram post in collaboration with eBay, Goldin
As expected, this has led to plenty of online commentary.
“I got an onion shaped like bulbasaurs back taking offers,” someone else. ( is shaped like an onion.)
Many commenters “Comedian,” Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s 2019 artwork that consists of a , which in 2024.
“This has gotta be one of the most unserious things I’ve ever seen go up for auction in the Pokémon world, this is hilarious,” (Super Duper Dani), who was able to see the uniquely shaped snack up close at Goldin’s booth at Collect-A-Con in Los Angeles earlier this month.
Representatives for Cheetos did not immediately respond to a TODAY.com’s request for comment, but the company’s Instagram account simply , “👀” in response to the sale.
Goldin says the Cheetozard was initially discovered and preserved sometime between 2018 and 2022 by 1st & Goal Collectibles. In April 2024, the collectibles store that the shapely snack sat in a safe “for about five years” before someone rediscovered it.
The Cheeto went viral in the time since its uncovering, appearing in posts and memes on various social media platforms. One fan even to its existence: the Cheetozard meme coin.
It must also be said that, at this point, uniquely-shaped Cheetos are a market unto themselves. Snacks shaped like , and the are all currently being auctioned on eBay for thousands of dollars.
While those have yet to be sold, the $87,000 Cheetozard actually might be a steal: In 2017, a Cheeto apparently shaped like Harambe the gorilla .
