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March 31, 2009

Maybe what you need is a giant Cheeto

It's a rainy Friday here, so it's easy to feel a little gloomy: another week at an end, another stock market rise and fall (and fall and rise), another rock pushed up the hill, only to fall down again.

But here's good news: Frito-Lay, knowing that we need something to make us smile, has introduced ping-pong ball-sized Cheetos.

According to USA Today, the oversized Cheetos are part of a trend toward playful food and other products. "People are looking for anything to break the negativity," says Ann Mukherjee, marketing guru at Frito-Lay. And Lynn Dornblaser, new products guru at researcher Mintel, explains that "people are looking for escape valves to take their minds off the economy."

And what better way to do that than jumbo Cheetos or straw-shaped Oreos that you can drink milk through or a giant calendar with bubble wrap you can pop as each day goes by?

The products, by the way, are mostly designed not for kids, but for adults—we're the ones who need cheering up, after all.

(You might ask: What does this have to do with communication? Absolutely nothing.) Happy Friday!

Posted by Alison Davis at March 31, 2009 01:15 PM