Let’s Figure Out What The Cars Are In These Crunchy Car-Shaped Snacks

As you might expect, the cross-country $800/375,000-mile taxi roadtrip provided a lot of opportunities for snacking. Snackatunities, as they say in the industry. And while I didn’t avail myself to every bag of salty crunchy sweet chewy cheesy goodness, I did note at least one significant automotive-themed snack: Runners.

Oh, and by the way, I will be getting the final update on the trip out today. I hope. The spoiler is that yes, we made it!

Anyway, back to Runners, which appear to be a snack with origins in Mexico, made by Barcel, the Grupo Bimbo snack juggernaut that is probably best known here for their spicy tightly rolled tortilla chip snacks, Takis. Runners seem to have a similar spicy flavor profile, but are, significantly, made in the shape of cars.

I mean, this ad pretty much says just that, albeit in Spanish. A snack in the shape of a car:

The bag I saw has a pretty prominent image of the car-snack right on the front:

These crunchy cars seem to range from mildly spicy, like the Chile & Lime ones I saw, to intensely spicy, like these Fuego ones:

Those crunchy cars are sure tearing ass there, in what looks to be the photosphere of a star? But let’s take a closer look at these cars:

Hm. There’s something familiar there, something that would fit with the Mexican origins of the snack. Hear me out, visually:

See, I think these Runners are, in fact, based on the outline of the legendary Vocho, the very popular Mexican-market Volkswagen Beetle. Sort of stretched, too. The Runners shape has the basic rounded form of the Beetle, and the beltline and lines for the door are in roughly the right place.

Now, the windshield is a bit more curved, and the rear looks a bit cut-off, though that could be a suggestion of the Vocho’s license plate light? It’s not easy rendering any car in easily-reproducible snack materials, but this somehow feels Beetle-like. And Beetles were very common in Mexico for decades, and enjoy a lot of cultural recognition there, even though their time in the mainstream has mostly passed.

I’m open to other thoughts, though. And has anyone tried these? I foolishly didn’t get a bag when I had my chance, but I’m sure some of you out there have. Are they good? Do they have enough automotive flavor, or is it just heat?