There’s a scene in the campy ’80s flick “Earth Girls Are Easy” in which Geena Davis picks through her fridge to find something to eat for a trio of hungry, hirsute, primary-colored aliens who just parked their spaceship in her backyard pool. She pulls out a box of Pop-Tarts with great enthusiasm, as if she just discovered the secret to feeding extraterrestrials.
“Oh, look, low-cal Pop-Tarts!” Davis’s character exclaims. “These are natural.”
Sitting in the movie theater in 1988, I remember howling at the joke, buried in a deeply satirical script written by comedian-singer-actress Julie Brown and two others. Never mind that I completely missed the other gag tucked into the scene: that a box of shelf-stable Pop-Tarts was stored in the fridge in the first place.
My folks stored our Pop-Tarts in the cabinet, like all the other neighbors who jacked their kids up on sugar/high-fructose corn syrup smuggled into a convenience food designed to mimic a real breakfast pastry. As a child of the ’60s and ’70s, I recall the thrill at finding Pop-Tarts on the shelf, the box proudly trumpeting the snack’s frosted quality. I don’t remember recoiling in horror at the nutritional content, perhaps because Kellogg’s trotted out Milton the Toaster to inform us, in his nasally, slightly wiseguy New York accent, that each Pop-Tart contained “real fruit filling” and “six vitamins and iron.”
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Six vitamins and iron!
Then again, I didn’t exactly feel virtuous eating a Pop-Tart, either. I have memories of making a kind of juvenile junkie’s decision: Would I eat both Pop-Tarts tucked into the same foil wrapper, or would I limit myself to just one, content that I could satisfy my sugar cravings within the limits of human decency? I mean, I was the kind of Midwestern kid who figured people who buttered their Pop-Tarts were going straight to hell.
Mostly, though, I remember the experience of pulling a Pop-Tart from the toaster, its browned, crimped edges too hot to handle. I remember the sensations when biting into one: the warm crust, a cardboard-like substance that hinted just enough at the pleasures of real pastry dough; the strawberry filling, so gooey, tart and sweet beyond measure; and the frosting, a minor miracle that always provided a soft crackle no matter how hot it got. All these years later, I still sort of marvel at the food scientists who developed a frosting that doesn’t melt in the toaster.
I have dredged up these memories in the past few hours after reading that Bill Post, who is credited with helping invent the Pop-Tart, died Feb. 10 at the age of 96. He lived long enough to see his snack evolve into a pop-culture icon — and a symbol for what’s wrong with the highly processed American diet.
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The first Pop-Tarts were released 60 years ago in Cleveland. The breakfast pastry would be a hit beyond the company’s wildest expectations. Kellanova, the new company name for Kellogg’s portfolio of snack products, rakes in about $1 billion a year in Pop-Tart sales.
Over the course of six decades, the breakfast snack has generated more spinoffs than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. First came Frosted Pop-Tarts in 1967, which led a year later to Sugar Sparkled Frosting Pop-Tarts with sprinkles. Kellogg’s released a Pop-Tarts Crunch cereal in 1994 and Pop-Tarts Bites in 2018, the latter for those who refused to accept that the snack should be limited to breakfast.
Share this articleShareChefs and bakeries have jumped on the Pop-Tarts bandwagon, indulging our nostalgia by creating gourmet interpretations of the treat. Writer and recipe developer Claire Saffitz created one for Bon Appetit. Ted’s Bulletin, a popular chain in the D.C. area, has been selling their knockoff, Ted’s Tarts, for years. As far as I know, Kellogg’s/Kellanova hasn’t sent any cease-and-desist letters.
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For a while, the popularity of Pop-Tarts generated a whole cottage industry of stand-up comedy, and I’m not referring to the college football bowl game. Paula Poundstone once said in a routine that she injured herself trying to toast Pop-Tarts. “It says it right in the name,” she pointed out. “It’s Pop-Tart, not Stick-Your-Hand-In-And-Get-’Em Tarts.” In 1993, humorist Dave Barry conducted an experiment to see if Pop-Tarts would actually burst into flames if left in a toaster too long. They did.
“It was a dramatic moment, very similar to the one that occurred in the New Mexico desert nearly 50 years ago, when the awestruck atomic scientists of the Manhattan Project witnessed the massive blast that erupted from their first crude experimental snack pastry,” Barry wrote.
But Jerry Seinfeld may be the comedian most obsessed with Pop-Tarts. He has mocked them onstage: “Two in each packet, two slots in the toaster. There’s no wrong way! Why two? One’s not enough, and three’s too many. And they can’t go stale because they were never fresh.”
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This May, Netflix will release “Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story,” an “Air”-like docudrama based on a Seinfeld routine about how the snack made him happy as a child. Seinfeld co-wrote and directed the film, which not only features the comedian, but also many of his peers, including Melissa McCarthy, Amy Schumer and Jim Gaffigan (who has his own routine about processed food).
Somehow, I don’t think the movie will have the same legs as the product it depicts. In fact, if people are talking about Seinfeld’s movie 10 years from now, I’ll eat a whole box of Pop-Tarts, a treat I haven’t had in forever. I’ll even stick my hand in the toaster to grab them.
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