The Munchie Mobile: Shoddy Goods 041

I’m Jason Toon and I was born with a stoner’s appetite. In college I used to buy a 12-pack of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls and eat half the box on the walk back to the dorms—and that was before I’d ever smoked anything. But in this week’s Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about the absurdities of consumer culture, we look at the poor souls who need chemical enhancement to inflate their appetites to match mine…

With apologies to Ken Kesey.

Congratulations to Hostess, who last week turned a longtime flirtation into an official relationship. The Hostess Munchie Mobile marked the week leading up to the stoner holiday of 4/20 by rocking up outside cannabis shops along the East Coast to hand out free snack cakes. It culminated with a six-hour session in Brooklyn on 4/20 itself for those who “like their snacks the way they like life - baked and sweet.”

Oh, and who were willing to “speakie snackie” by reciting a phrase like “Bet you dollars to Donettes I have the munchies.” There’s no such thing as a free Ding Dong, I guess. (“We speakie snackie” is the tagline for Hostess’s current campaign, and a phrase I hope I never have to type, say, or think about ever again.)

It’s a hard pivot for the brand whose previously best-known marketing efforts were those one-page comic ads where, like, Aquaman pacifies a rampaging horde of shark-men by slinging some Choc-O-Diles their way. But after the J.M. Smucker company spent $4.6 billion to acquire Hostess in 2023, they can’t afford to be uptight about making that investment pay off.

Mellow out, brands

The ascent of 4/20 to the annual marketing calendar of mainstream brands like Hostess is a sign of how legitimate the recreational weed industry has become. On the federal level, marijuana remains a Schedule I drug, as illegal as fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine. But 24 states and the District of Columbia have legalized it for recreational use, while 15 more have a legal medicinal marijuana system that even stoners can usually navigate without much difficulty.

When I first wrote about the cannabis industry a decade ago, it was kind of a mess. But pot shops have become an unremarkable fixture in the states where they’re legal. And that has emboldened weed-friendly brands to step out of the haze and into the grow lights as they cultivate this budding market.

Dank you, come again

As the nation turned toward legal weed, they found fast food brands were already there. The first marijuana referendum campaigns were still going on when Carl’s Jr. rolled out their “wake and bake” uniforms in 2012. Jack in the Box followed with their late-night Munchie Meals, random jumbles of fat and carbs only available between 9 PM and 5 AM. And - no surprise - Taco Bell were first way back in 2007 with their “FourthMeal” campaign. Various bleary-eyed nocturnal party creatures droll over gooey cheese and tumbling steak strips while the narrator says “There’s a moment at night when all you want is FourthMeal.” Dude, totally.

It wasn’t just about the munchies. As soon as the weed was freed in the Rocky Mountain State, Spirit Airlines ran a campaign declaring “The ‘no smoking’ sign is off in Colorado” and inviting passengers to “Get mile high” with “fares so low they’re barely legal in some states.” Be careful winking so hard, Spirit Airlines, you might pull something.

Monetize it

But that was the greasy, low-rent, fringe demimonde of fast food and budget airlines. It took a few more years, and several more state-level legalization referendums, before recreational pot had inched toward the mainstream enough for more respectable brands to show up to the party.

Now it’s gone way beyond Lyft offering free rides on 4/20 and Totino’s posting about how “pizza rolls are better when baked.” We’re talking Miracle-Gro fertilizer releasing a “gardening on edibles” kit and H&R Block advising you how to deduct your weed expenses from your taxes. Finally, brands have an exploitable cultural event to fill that gap in the calendar between St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo. It seems fair to say that the edge of 4/20 marketing has gotten a bit… blunt (sorry not sorry).

Garden. Garden. Garrr-dennn. You ever notice how weird that word is?

Which I think is all for the best. Sure, weed used to be a lot more cool, a lot more dangerous, when it was totally illegal - and that legal danger messed up a lot of people’s lives for no good reason. If a button-down packaged food-megalith like J.M. Smucker is comfortable letting a legacy brand like Hostess be openly associated with weed, it’s because a lot fewer people are getting thrown in jail for using it. Even us non-partakers can raise a Ho-Ho to cannabis becoming ho-hum.

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I think Jason’s set a record for most weed puns in one newsletter. What’s the weed marketing like in your area? Is every third billboard making sure you know where the nearest cannabis shop is? Is everything locked down and verboten? Or are you in that gray area, where the marketing’s full of allusions and suggestions but not quite coming right out and saying it? Let’s hear about it in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat!

—Dave (and the rest of Meh)

Roll up a fat one with these sticky - no, I’m sorry, I can’t do this. Here are some other Shoddy Goods stories you might like:

• The Redenbacher obsession: one man’s quest for the perfect popping corn
• A Hidden Valley Ranch press release pours it on a little too thick
• The craft and the science behind zero-alcohol beer (and why it isn’t cheaper)

And thanks to good friend Rob Ruminski for the hot tip that led to this week’s story!