Long before cannabis dispensaries became ordinary storefronts and 4/20 became an unofficial cultural holiday, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong were making Americans laugh about a part of society that mainstream entertainment mostly treated as taboo.
They didn't invent cannabis culture, and they certainly didn't invent the American counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. What they did was turn that culture into characters and stories that millions of people could recognize and laugh at.
Along the way, Cheech & Chong sold millions of comedy albums, won a Grammy, filled theaters, made one of the most influential stoner comedies ever produced and helped create a style of comedy that continues to influence movies and television today. The GRAMMY Museum has described them as the first strictly counterculture comics and credits their albums and films with providing a template for later comedy albums and stoner movies.
More than five decades later, Cheech & Chong remain instantly recognizable. That's an impressive accomplishment for any entertainment property, but it's also what makes them particularly interesting to retailers.
To understand why people still want Cheech & Chong merchandise, though, you have to understand how unlikely their story really was.
It Started in a Pretty Strange Vancouver Nightclub
Cheech & Chong came from very different backgrounds.
Richard "Cheech" Marin grew up in Los Angeles and moved to Canada during the Vietnam War era. Tommy Chong was Canadian and already had a career as a musician. Chong played guitar with Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers, a group signed to Motown, before eventually turning his attention toward comedy.
The place where their partnership developed wasn't exactly Second City.
It was the Shanghai Junk in Vancouver, a struggling hippie burlesque club operated by Chong.
Years later, Marin remembered the place vividly. There were strippers, a mime performer, drugs, assorted characters and apparently a carpet sticky enough to make a lasting impression. Chong had started experimenting with improvisational comedy there, and Marin was brought in to help write material.
Somewhere inside that chaos, they discovered that they were extremely funny together.
Their personalities naturally played against one another. Cheech developed fast-talking, streetwise characters while Chong perfected the relaxed, perpetually confused hippie. Their comedy relied heavily on characters and improvisation rather than simply moving from one traditional joke to another.
The partnership eventually took them to Los Angeles, where record producer Lou Adler saw them perform at the Troubadour and recognized that their comedy could work on record. Adler already had considerable success producing artists including Carole King and The Mamas & the Papas, but recording Cheech & Chong presented an unusual question.
What exactly did a Cheech & Chong record sound like?
According to a story the duo later told CBS, Adler asked them what they wanted to do. Surrounded by gold records in Adler's office, Cheech came up with a straightforward answer: make a record like those.
Chong told Adler they needed $1,000 and a tape recorder. Cheech quickly pointed out that there were two of them, so they should probably make that $2,000.
It was a very Cheech & Chong beginning to what became an enormously successful recording career.
Before Up in Smoke, Cheech & Chong Were Selling Records
Today, people tend to associate Cheech & Chong with movies, but their first major success came through comedy albums.
That distinction is important because comedy records were a much bigger part of popular culture during the 1970s. People bought them, brought them to parties and listened to favorite routines repeatedly. The best comedy albums could become part of someone's record collection right alongside Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd or The Rolling Stones.
Cheech & Chong's self-titled debut arrived in 1971 and featured routines including "Dave," "Cruisin' With Pedro De Pacas" and "Trippin' in Court."
Then things got much bigger.
Their 1972 album Big Bambú reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and received a Grammy nomination. The following year's Los Cochinos also reached No. 2 and won the Grammy for Best Comedy Recording. Lou Adler eventually produced five platinum albums for the duo and described what they were doing as "hard rock comedy."
That phrase actually captures their appeal remarkably well.
Cheech & Chong weren't operating in a separate comedy universe. They were part of the same youth culture surrounding rock music, underground radio, changing social attitudes and the aftermath of the 1960s counterculture.
Even their album packaging participated in the joke. The original Big Bambú release was designed to resemble an oversized package of rolling papers, and early copies actually included a giant rolling paper inside.
It was comedy that you could listen to, quote, pass around and display.
By the middle of the 1970s, Cheech & Chong weren't merely comedians with a cult following. They were recording stars.
Hollywood was the logical next step.
Up in Smoke Changed Everything
In 1978, Cheech & Chong made their first feature film, Up in Smoke, directed by Lou Adler.
The story follows Pedro and Man, two stoners who meet by chance and eventually become involved in unknowingly transporting a van made from marijuana from Mexico to Los Angeles.
It's absurd, but that was the point.
Before Cheech & Chong, marijuana had often been portrayed in American movies as dangerous, criminal or morally corrupting. The infamous 1936 film Reefer Madness is probably the best-known example.
Up in Smoke approached the subject from an entirely different direction.
The stoners weren't the villains. They were the protagonists.
The authority figures chasing them were often more ridiculous than they were.
Audiences responded.
The GRAMMY Museum reports that Up in Smoke eventually earned more than $100 million at the box office, an extraordinary result for a movie made by first-time film stars with a first-time director.
The fact that they were beginners also produced one of the better stories from the set.
During filming, the cast and crew were ready for a scene, but nothing was happening. Everyone was waiting. Finally, an assistant director leaned over to Lou Adler and reminded him that he needed to say "action."
Adler had simply forgotten.
It was his first movie too.
There was another funny bit of movie magic happening on camera. Despite the subject matter, the marijuana Cheech and Chong smoked during Up in Smoke wasn't actually marijuana. Adler recalled that they smoked lettuce, while Cheech described the fake movie weed as essentially vegetable matter that tasted terrible. Chong said real joints were around, but they weren't smoked on camera in Up in Smoke.
Somehow, a first-time director, two first-time movie stars and a lot of fake marijuana created a movie that people are still watching nearly half a century later.
The Comedy Was About More Than Getting High
It's easy to reduce Cheech & Chong to marijuana jokes, but doing so misses a large part of why their comedy mattered.
They emerged from a period when American society was going through an enormous generational shift. The country had experienced Vietnam, political protest, the hippie movement, the sexual revolution and a widening cultural gap between younger Americans and their parents.
Cheech & Chong found comedy inside that divide.
Their characters regularly encountered police officers, judges, parents and other authority figures who had absolutely no idea what to make of them. Sometimes Cheech and Chong were the fools. Just as often, the supposedly respectable people around them looked equally ridiculous.
That allowed the audience to laugh at the counterculture while also laughing with it.
Their comedy also brought another perspective into mainstream American entertainment.
Cheech's Mexican-American characters incorporated elements of East Los Angeles and Chicano culture at a time when those communities received far less representation in mainstream movies and television. The lowriders, neighborhoods, accents, music and characters weren't incidental decorations. They were part of the world Cheech knew.
That cultural connection continued throughout Marin's career. He eventually became one of the country's most prominent collectors and advocates of Chicano art, adding another dimension to a career that many people initially associated almost entirely with comedy.
They Helped Create an Entire Comedy Genre
Watch enough movies from the decades after Up in Smoke and the influence becomes fairly easy to recognize.
The lovable stoner became a familiar character.
So did the stoner buddy comedy.
Films could eventually build entire plots around marijuana culture without needing to explain that culture to the audience first. Cheech & Chong had already helped establish the language, characters and conventions of the genre.
The GRAMMY Museum specifically credits their recordings and movies with serving as a template for future comedy albums and stoner films.
Their cultural timing makes their longevity even more fascinating.
When Up in Smoke arrived in 1978, marijuana remained illegal throughout the United States and carried a very different public stigma than it does today. Cheech & Chong were making jokes about a culture that existed largely outside respectable mainstream society.
Decades later, cannabis legalization spread across much of the country, dispensaries became legitimate retail businesses, and 4/20 evolved into a widely recognized piece of popular culture.
Cheech & Chong didn't simply remain relevant while society changed around them. In a strange way, society moved closer to the world they had been joking about all along.
Cheech and Chong Also Became Famous Without Each Other
The duo eventually went their separate ways professionally, but both men remained visible in popular culture.
Cheech Marin developed an extensive acting career that went far beyond his original stoner persona. He appeared in Born in East L.A., Tin Cup, Nash Bridges and numerous Robert Rodriguez projects. His voice acting introduced him to an entirely different generation through movies such as The Lion King and Cars.
Tommy Chong found another enormous audience as Leo, the aging hippie who worked at the Foto Hut on That '70s Show. For younger viewers who hadn't grown up with Cheech & Chong records, Chong suddenly became familiar all over again.
The two eventually reunited. In 2008 they launched their Light Up America comedy tour, proving that the audience was still there decades after their original success.
Then, in 2018, something happened that probably would have sounded ridiculous back at the Shanghai Junk.
Cheech & Chong became museum material.
The GRAMMY Museum created an exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of Up in Smoke. It included the movie's original marked-up script, the soundtrack master tape, comedy sketches, memorabilia and selections from Cheech Marin's Chicano guitar art collection.
Two comedians who had built careers making jokes about stoners, hippies and authority figures had become an officially recognized piece of American cultural history.
Why Cheech & Chong Merchandise Still Works
All of that history creates an unusual opportunity for retailers because Cheech & Chong isn't dependent on a new movie, television series or album to remain recognizable.
Different customers discover the brand for completely different reasons.
An original fan may remember buying the comedy albums in the 1970s. A Gen X customer may remember discovering Up in Smoke on VHS or cable television. Someone younger may know Tommy Chong from That '70s Show. Another customer may simply recognize Cheech & Chong as icons of cannabis culture.
That gives the merchandise several overlapping audiences, which is particularly valuable for pop culture stores and smoke shops.
A Cheech & Chong shirt can be a movie shirt, a comedy shirt, a retro shirt or a cannabis culture shirt depending on who's buying it.
Retailers should take advantage of that rather than treating the merchandise like just another licensed graphic tee.
For Smoke Shops, The Connection Is Already Built In
Smoke shops have an advantage with Cheech & Chong because customers don't need the connection explained to them.
The property fits naturally into the environment.
That makes Cheech & Chong apparel and accessories particularly useful as impulse purchases and add-on items. A customer may have entered the store looking for something completely unrelated to apparel, but a recognizable Up in Smoke graphic can trigger a memory and create an additional sale.
Merchandising matters, though.
Rather than putting a few Cheech & Chong shirts into a generic apparel rack, create a small display around the property. Use it as part of a 4/20 promotion. Place merchandise where customers buying lifestyle accessories will encounter it. If you carry several products, group them together so the customer recognizes that you've created a collection rather than stocked a random T-shirt.
Nostalgia becomes especially powerful in this setting because it gives customers a reason to stop.
Someone recognizes the artwork and remembers watching Up in Smoke with friends. Someone else remembers an old Cheech & Chong album. Another customer calls a friend over because the graphic reminds them of a scene from the movie.
Those reactions are valuable because the merchandise has already done something a generic product cannot do. It has created an emotional connection before the customer even checks the price.
Pop Culture Retailers Can Sell the Story
Pop culture retailers can approach the property differently.
Cheech & Chong fits comfortably alongside music merchandise, classic movies, retro comedy and other counterculture properties. It doesn't necessarily need to be merchandised exclusively around cannabis.
A store could incorporate Cheech & Chong into a section featuring cult movie classics or 1970s pop culture. It could sit alongside rock merchandise because the duo's history is closely connected to the music industry. A retailer with a large graphic tee business could merchandise the property around classic films and nostalgia.
The important thing is to give the customer some context.
Consider a small display sign explaining that Big Bambú reached No. 2 on the Billboard album chart, or that Los Cochinos won a Grammy. Mention that Up in Smoke earned more than $100 million at the box office.
Suddenly the customer isn't just looking at two guys on a T-shirt.
They're looking at a piece of entertainment history.
Social Media Can Turn the Merchandise Into a Conversation
Cheech & Chong also gives retailers something valuable that many licensed properties don't offer: decades of stories.
Use them.
Instead of posting a product photo with "New Cheech & Chong tees available now," tell customers something they may not know.
Post an Up in Smoke design and explain that Lou Adler forgot to call "action" during one of his first days directing the movie.
Post a Big Bambú shirt and tell followers that the original album packaging included an enormous rolling paper.
Show a 4/20 display and explain that Cheech & Chong were making cannabis comedy when American movies still largely portrayed marijuana as a social menace.
Then ask customers when they first discovered Cheech & Chong or which movie they remember best.
A product post becomes a piece of content people can comment on, share and send to friends. That's particularly effective with nostalgic properties because customers often want to tell their own stories.
The merchandise becomes the reason for starting the conversation rather than the entire conversation itself.
More Than 50 Years Later, People Still Get the Joke
The strongest argument for Cheech & Chong merchandise may simply be that we're still talking about them.
They started performing together when Richard Nixon was president. Their comedy career predates Saturday Night Live, the original Star Wars and MTV. They built their first audience through vinyl records and live performances, then survived the transition to movie theaters, VHS, cable television, DVDs, streaming and social media.
During that same period, the culture surrounding their comedy changed dramatically.
Yet a customer can still see Cheech's red knit cap or Chong's bandana and beard and immediately understand the reference.
That kind of recognition is difficult to manufacture. It takes decades to build.
For smoke shops, Cheech & Chong merchandise connects directly to the history and humor of cannabis culture. For pop culture stores, it offers recognizable imagery tied to comedy, music, movies, the 1970s and American counterculture.
The retailers most likely to succeed with the property won't simply put the merchandise on a rack and wait for someone to find it. They'll use that history. They'll create displays, tell the stories, build 4/20 promotions, make social content and remind customers why these two guys became famous in the first place.
After more than half a century, Cheech & Chong still make people laugh.
For a retailer selling licensed merchandise, having customers smile before they even pick up the product is a pretty good place to start.
