Twenty-one years ago, Domino’s Pizza ran a fairly mundane promotion: customers who purchased a large one-topping pizza would also receive an order of cheesy bread, on the house. This event would not have even registered for me, or anyone I knew, had Domino’s not advertised it like this:
It was an act of comedic and commercial genius. Seemingly overnight, the phrase “You’re free, cheesy bread! You’re free!” entered my family’s vernacular, and it never left. My mother, sister, and I came to use it for small escapes—got out of a traffic jam? Free cheesy bread!—and greater accomplishments, from quitting a job to graduating college to finalizing a divorce. When new people in our lives experienced moments of freedom, we showed them the commercial, and read them in.
Two decades later, the cheesy bread is still flying free. Last week, Our Jane shared a moment of auto-liberation and was initiated into the tradition. I went to YouTube to find the commercial, as I always do, and watched it several times myself. (Still good.) But this time, for the first time, I scrolled down past the video into the comments section. And then I got emotional.
To this day Hubs and I say “YOU’RE FREE CHEESY BREAD!”
For years I have been using the phrase ” you are free like cheesy bread” to my kids. now I finally got to show them the commercial that started it all…
Thanks I love this commercial and still tell me dog that he’s “FREEE, cheesy bread!” when I let him off his leash at the park.
Thanks for posting this. Who knew that 9 years later I’d be using this video to explain to my kids why they are “free cheesy bread” all these years.
I say it to my dog too.
In hindsight, it seems so obvious that all of this would have happened. Domino’s Pizza commercials have saturated the airwaves for nearly as long as the chain has been in existence. Of course the punchline landed in other households. Of course the words were repeated, repeated, repeated, until they took on new meaning and became something else, a ritual, an incantation. Of course we passed them down to our babies and dogs, and outward to friends and partners. This is what we do, as social animals: we transmit our culture. We celebrate successes. We set one another free.
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Art by me.
Cheesy Bread Facts
01. Domino’s Pizza first expanded into the international market in 1983. It would be another 30 years before they made it into Italy. Within a few years, they left again. As it turns out, Italians don’t want Domino’s.
02. According to an official Domino’s Pizza recipe from 2011, one serving of stuffed cheesy bread contains 10% of the average adult’s recommended daily intake of calcium.
03. In 2002, a user named Wallydraigle (now banned) logged in to a technology message board to rant about the then-recently released commercial. “Are we suppossed [sic] to assume that it’s normal for little girls to turn bread products loose in the yard? Is this just what they do in California? Can someone with a knack for marketing please tell me what I am suppossed [sic] to think when I see this?”
04. I have never eaten Domino’s cheesy bread.
05. A user named Crab responded: “Free cheesy bread….like as in not caged.”
Hahahaha! Thank you for the morning laugh.
My family have our own cadre of loaded phrases like this which we’ve mostly gleaned from movies – so much so that my adult daughter put together a list of “essential movies” which any potential partner would have to see in order to understand how we talk to one another. (That movie list is also her first relationship hurdle. If you don’t like these movies, you probably won’t fit.)
I appreciate the formal list! Many families must have a mental list; it’s a service to new inductees to give them an actual syllabus.
1: the commercial was a beacon of hope into the future and will stand the test of time- unlike the Betamax.
2. Walt Disney was fired from his job at a newspaper early in his career–they said he lacked imagination.
3. At the traditional developmental age of the little girl in the commercial, children think in concrete rather than abstract properties.
4. Please listen to the following reference:
https://www.google.com/search?q=all+my+life%27s+a+circle+lyrics&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS721US744&oq=allmy+lifes+&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j0i10i13i512l2j0i13i512j0i10i13i512j46i10i13i512j0i10i13i30l2j0i22i30l2.11900j0j4&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:8bee1d03,vid:HVTqfJr4Gpk
5. Your writing should be formalized into a book!
Thanks, Mom. (I agree on all counts.)
I want to be free, like cheesy bread.
I want this for you, too, Craig! May we all be cheesy and free.