Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Man, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck.
Speaker 2: Jerry's here too, talking about her grandmother and what she
Speaker 2: did with pop tarts and that actually sounds kind of good.
Speaker 1: Oh man, my grandmother wouldn't have there wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: a pop tart anywhere near her house.
Speaker 2: Oh no, she was like that. Huh.
Speaker 1: Well one of them, my one more, I mean one
Speaker 1: was sort of the modern grandmother. My mom's mom. They
Speaker 1: had like TV and stuff like that and a BCR.
Speaker 1: But Granny Bryant, my dad's mother, was very old school,
Speaker 1: sort of rural Tennessee, and like, she didn't have a television,
Speaker 1: she didn't have anything like a.
Speaker 2: Pop tart, right, She's like, if I didn't can it,
Speaker 2: you're not gonna eat it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. She's just kind of had the big, big jar
Speaker 1: of grease on the stove that like, she never bought
Speaker 1: oil in her life. She just kept re using the
Speaker 1: same stuff.
Speaker 2: Man, I'll bet that tasted good though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Granny Bryant the best.
Speaker 2: Well, that's funny you said that one of your other grandmother,
Speaker 2: your mom's mom, was modern. Yeah, because that's actually Some
Speaker 2: theories say that that is what pop tarts grew out of,
Speaker 2: that there was this huge shift in the sixties, usually
Speaker 2: pointed to a second wave feminism where women began to
Speaker 2: essentially say, like, this whole traditional housewife thing is basically
Speaker 2: domestic servitude, and I'm not down for it anymore. I'm
Speaker 2: going to work in the workplace. And so convenience food
Speaker 2: grew up almost immediately to kind of fill that void
Speaker 2: or whatever, the vacuum that was left as moms started
Speaker 2: to move out of the house into the workplace and
Speaker 2: people still needed to eat, that's right.
Speaker 1: And I feel like this is one where we assume
Speaker 1: everyone knows what a pop tart is, oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: we get punished for that in emails. So a pop
Speaker 1: tart is a maybe a breakfast eye. But as we'll
Speaker 1: see in the old ads, it was you could be
Speaker 1: for lunch or a snack or whatever. But it is
Speaker 1: a toaster pastry. It's a little sort of fruit filled
Speaker 1: faux pastry that you stick in your toaster or not
Speaker 1: and toasted up or not. And it came about and
Speaker 1: we're gonna, you know, we need to think Livia, but
Speaker 1: we definitely want to thank Diana Stampfler for the website
Speaker 1: Promote Michigan because, as Livia found, as I found, when
Speaker 1: it comes to pop Tart origin stories, Diana Stampler's is
Speaker 1: the bomb Diggity.
Speaker 2: She did her homework.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she had a lot of great detail that other
Speaker 1: places didn't have, so big thanks to that website. But
Speaker 1: pop Tarts came out of the nineteen sixties. And we're
Speaker 1: going to have to retell a little bit of our
Speaker 1: live episode about the Kellogg Serial Corporation and the Kellogg
Speaker 1: brothers because that's where this story starts. We'll give you
Speaker 1: kind of a quick little overview, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was our live episode from Sydney. It was good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the Kellogg brothers, William Keith or will Keith and
Speaker 2: John Harvey Kellogg, they ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which
Speaker 2: essentially was a health spa health resort dedicated to getting
Speaker 2: you to poop with precise perfectness.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and other things.
Speaker 2: And this was in the nineteenth century, and so as
Speaker 2: a result of this, one of the things that came
Speaker 2: out of it was the Kellogg brothers inventing new types
Speaker 2: of food. And one of the foods that they invented
Speaker 2: were corn flakes, And almost as importantly as them inventing
Speaker 2: corn flakes was the one of their guests, one of
Speaker 2: their patients coming along, and his name was C. W. Post.
Speaker 1: That's right. He loved those corn flakes and spend a
Speaker 1: little time there and said, you know what, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start making my own cereal. I remember a lot of that.
Speaker 1: I guess when you do the live show several times.
Speaker 1: I remember a lot of details from that one, by
Speaker 1: the way, but like individual jokes.
Speaker 2: Even oh well, lay it on me, buddy, I'll just.
Speaker 1: Made think of the Elton John album title was that,
Speaker 1: But I can't remember the name of the machine, the
Speaker 1: electric bath something. It sounded like an Elton John.
Speaker 2: Electric light bath.
Speaker 1: Electric light bath was, yes, I remember that.
Speaker 2: It was like one of those one person steam rooms
Speaker 2: where your head stuck out, but it was exactly yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's what was going on at Battle Creek. But
Speaker 1: Cwpost tries that Kellogg Cornflake says, I love this stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm going to form a company to make it. And
Speaker 1: the Post company was formed in eighteen ninety five, and
Speaker 1: it was about ten or eleven years after that that
Speaker 1: Kellogg got into the cereal business. Like legit wise and
Speaker 1: established their Battle Creek Toasted corn Flake company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they're like, we're going to sell these things
Speaker 2: outside of the sanitarium. And now Post and Kellogg's were
Speaker 2: direct competitors. Yeah, and this new emerging cereal market that
Speaker 2: those two companies created out of thin air. By the
Speaker 2: time the SI roll around a good half a century later,
Speaker 2: breakfast cereal was a thing. It had been healthy, healthy, healthy,
Speaker 2: and then I think starting in nineteen forty eight, sugar
Speaker 2: Crisp was the first sugar cereal that came out, and
Speaker 2: it was like, oh, they went full board right out
Speaker 2: of the gate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean with sugar crisps.
Speaker 2: So I think they call it golden crisp now because
Speaker 2: you like, a mob with torches and pitchforks would come
Speaker 2: after you if you called your cereal sugar crisp. But
Speaker 2: it's the same thing. And that came out in the forties.
Speaker 2: So by the time the sixties were around, you had
Speaker 2: a lot of different sugary cereals, and Kellogg's and Posts
Speaker 2: were making a lot of them. But the upshot of
Speaker 2: the cereal market being established is there's not a lot
Speaker 2: of new things you can do. You can come up
Speaker 2: with a new cereal and it'll be kind of a
Speaker 2: hit or not, and that's about all you can do.
Speaker 2: So they started looking for entirely new products to kind
Speaker 2: of feel like, I said, this vacuum that was being
Speaker 2: left by second wave feminism getting women out of the
Speaker 2: house and into the workplace, so that they were like,
Speaker 2: we need to come up with convenience foods that are
Speaker 2: even more convenient than cereal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then pouring something out of a box and adding milk.
Speaker 2: And then reading the back of the box.
Speaker 1: Or water in the case of was that Fridays, You.
Speaker 2: Better put some water in that. Damn. I love that one.
Speaker 1: Classic. So this was also a time a post war
Speaker 1: sort of food science boom was happening where they were
Speaker 1: making all this sort of dehydrated space age astronaut food
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and so that had a lot
Speaker 1: to do with it as well. And post was experimenting
Speaker 1: with that stuff and experimenting with wrapping things in foil
Speaker 1: dehydrating or partially dehydrating stuff, and they said, all right,
Speaker 1: we're making these gains burgers. This dog crumbly, you know,
Speaker 1: looks like a meat burger for your dog that's wrapped
Speaker 1: in foil that you break apart.
Speaker 2: Do you remember those?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, they're still around, right or did they
Speaker 1: go away?
Speaker 2: They ran away in the nineties I read.
Speaker 1: I definitely remember Gainsburger's because I always remember thinking like,
Speaker 1: those are the luckiest stocks in the world, do.
Speaker 2: You Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: Like my family would never buy that stuff.
Speaker 2: No. Same here. That was like luxury dog food at
Speaker 2: the time, but now it'd be like I wouldn't even
Speaker 2: feed this toough no. Oh right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they're experimenting with like foil wrap things, and
Speaker 1: as you'll see, that's what pop tarts were wrapped in.
Speaker 1: So that's why that's kind of key. And they said,
Speaker 1: all right, we've invented a pastry filled with fruit, like
Speaker 1: a fruit mixture, and we figured out how to make
Speaker 1: it shelf stable so it doesn't need to go in
Speaker 1: the fridge, and how to have it not collect bacteria
Speaker 1: over time. Yeah, and toasters on the counter were a
Speaker 1: thing now instead of just having to use the oven
Speaker 1: for everything. And so they shape them into a toaster
Speaker 1: sized thing, wrapped it in foil. And in October nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three, the Battle Creek in Choirer newspaper reported that
Speaker 1: these country squares, which is what they're calling them is
Speaker 1: the latest and greatest food that you're gonna want on
Speaker 1: your breakfast table.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it took me a little while, but I
Speaker 2: wondered if country squares was a play on country squire.
Speaker 1: What's country squire?
Speaker 2: It was a landowner, a rural landowner in medieval England.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, I doubt it, but you never know.
Speaker 2: Okay, they call them country squares. Let's just leave it
Speaker 2: at that. Okay, Josh, Fine, but this was Post. This
Speaker 2: wasn't Kellogg's who ended up making the pop tart. This
Speaker 2: was Post who was breaking new ground with these little
Speaker 2: handheld toaster heated pastries.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Problem was the I don't know if the Battle Creek
Speaker 2: Quirer got in there and had a spy or else,
Speaker 2: if there was a really dumb vice president that was
Speaker 2: getting exposure in the Battle Creek Chuirer. But Post was
Speaker 2: not ready to go to market with these things. They
Speaker 2: had a recipe, but they didn't know how they were
Speaker 2: going to package it, market it, get it out to stores.
Speaker 2: So they had many months of development left ahead of
Speaker 2: them when news broke. Well, it just so happens that
Speaker 2: the higher ups at companies like Kellogg read the Battle
Speaker 2: Creek Inquirer because they're in the same town. And this
Speaker 2: gave them the ability to catch up because they were
Speaker 2: caught totally off guard by this. Yeah, but it gave
Speaker 2: them the ability to catch up, scramble and create their
Speaker 2: own versions. And I believe pop Tarts ended up beating
Speaker 2: Country Squares to market.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the vice president of kellogg says, what
Speaker 1: is this Country Squares And someone said it's a rural
Speaker 1: landowner in England. No. There was a vice president though,
Speaker 1: named William Lamoth, and he had a guy working there
Speaker 1: in the kitchen named Doc Joe Thompson, and he said,
Speaker 1: get to work. We need our own pastry. And it
Speaker 1: would be their first foray into any kind of little
Speaker 1: bakery product like that. And they wanted a partner because they,
Speaker 1: you know, again, they were just serial people.
Speaker 2: So he likes to have a partner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So they went to the Heckman Biscuit Company,
Speaker 1: which was conveniently also in Michigan. They had been around
Speaker 1: selling Dutch cookies since the beginning of the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: door to door, and by the nineteen sixties when this
Speaker 1: is happening, their division of the United Biscuit Company of America,
Speaker 1: which would eventually become Keebler in sixty six. Right there
Speaker 1: in Grand Rapids, they had a great modern industrial bakery
Speaker 1: and it was a really sort of a great partnership
Speaker 1: out of the gate Grand Rapids.
Speaker 2: By the way, just a little personal aside is where
Speaker 2: I learned that I actually love frog legs.
Speaker 1: Oh really.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There was this dinner theater in Grand Rapids that
Speaker 2: my family used to go to when I was growing
Speaker 2: up in Toledo, and.
Speaker 1: The frog leg Theater.
Speaker 2: On their buffet, they had frog legs, and I would
Speaker 2: I tried them once and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: these are amazing. I don't think I would eat one now.
Speaker 2: But when I was like eight, nine, ten, I would
Speaker 2: eat some frog legs.
Speaker 1: I don't know where it was, buddy, but I tried
Speaker 1: frog legs on a buffet in the nineteen seventies or
Speaker 1: early eighties. Yeah, and I thought, Hey, this tastes like
Speaker 1: chicken kind of.
Speaker 2: It's the weird skin that really throws it off.
Speaker 1: Though these were fried, so I don't remember the skin,
Speaker 1: and this is a very distant memory. So but I'm
Speaker 1: with you. I couldn't eat a frog now.
Speaker 2: These were not fried. These were like braised.
Speaker 1: Mine were fried.
Speaker 2: So back to thanks for indulging me. Sure, So back
Speaker 2: to the Heckman Biscuit Company. At the time, they were
Speaker 2: making stuff like macaroons, butter cookies, vanilla wafers, windmills, ginger snaps,
Speaker 2: all your favorite like old timey cookies. This company was
Speaker 2: making and to make all this stuff they had just
Speaker 2: a really knockout dynamite production facility, so it was a
Speaker 2: good idea to go to them. Apparently the Heckman Company
Speaker 2: wasn't fully on board with this, but there was a
Speaker 2: guy named William Post, no relation to the Post Cereal company,
Speaker 2: who was in this, did work for Heckman at their
Speaker 2: Grand Rapids and he's like, I'll do this, I'll take
Speaker 2: this project on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it wasn't an official thing. I think it
Speaker 1: was a handshake agreement at first. They started, you know,
Speaker 1: testing out versions, giving them to their kids to try,
Speaker 1: of course, which is sort of the usual story when
Speaker 1: food science is involved. In Dan, I think the son
Speaker 1: of William Post again supposedly no relation. Quite a coincidence, though,
Speaker 1: don't you think.
Speaker 2: It is quite a yeah, almost suspicious?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, But little Dan said they taste like cardboard.
Speaker 1: And they said, all right, let's go back to the
Speaker 1: drawing board. And he said, well, these explode when you
Speaker 1: put them in the toast. Their dad and they said,
Speaker 1: all right, well, let's put some holes in it, like
Speaker 1: you know how you score a pie for the same
Speaker 1: reason that you bacon an oven. They started scoring the
Speaker 1: dough for the you know, and kind of solve that
Speaker 1: problem out of the gate.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's why there's little holes and pop tarts
Speaker 2: still today.
Speaker 1: That's right, because they will explode. It's true fruit expands,
Speaker 1: I guess, or fruit like stuff. And they initially set
Speaker 1: on as Daniel de Lewis would say, fruit scones, the
Speaker 1: rest of us would say fruit scones. And I think
Speaker 1: there were four flavors out of the gate, strawberry, blueberry,
Speaker 1: and apple currant that were partnered with Smuckers, another great
Speaker 1: idea to provide their fruit filling. And then oh baby,
Speaker 1: the fourth one, the all time great brown sugar cinnamon.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's the best one, hands down.
Speaker 1: Oh you too, huh oh, yes, okay, great, what a relief.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some lipped in BlackBerry tea and brown sugar cinnamon
Speaker 2: pop tarts in the evening was just a great way
Speaker 2: to wind down after a long day in third grade.
Speaker 1: So what is that garbage? Jerry said before we recorded.
Speaker 2: She talked about her grandmother making that part, making a
Speaker 2: blueberry I believe, blueberry pop tarts that were un fragtasted
Speaker 2: and buttering them.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, that was going to hang on to that
Speaker 1: for my final tip, but I might as well launch
Speaker 1: into it now. That is the secret to pop tarts.
Speaker 1: Put it in the toaster, toast it up for me,
Speaker 1: brown sugar, cinnamon. Then you get a stick of butter.
Speaker 1: I think I've said this on another episode and maybe
Speaker 1: our Breakfast episode, Okay, and then you just take that
Speaker 1: stick of butter, don't even like cut off a piece,
Speaker 1: just unwrap it a little bit, flip it over to
Speaker 1: the non frosted side and just sort of rub it
Speaker 1: on there. And then don't forget about that frosted side,
Speaker 1: my friend, flip it back over, butter up that frosted
Speaker 1: side a little and the edges and get those corners.
Speaker 1: And because the problem with pop tarts to me is
Speaker 1: always a little too dry where there's no filling, and
Speaker 1: this solves a problem. It's buttery, it's delicious, I highly
Speaker 1: recommend it.
Speaker 2: Okay, if you mentioned that before, then there's a one
Speaker 2: hundred percent chance that I followed up with this that
Speaker 2: I have. I heard of that from Jessica Simpson. Oh
Speaker 2: who mentioned it. I guess when she was pregnant. She
Speaker 2: was craving buttered pop tarts and I hadn't heard of
Speaker 2: it until then.
Speaker 1: It's the finishing touch, it's the cherry on top. It really,
Speaker 1: it really finishes it off nicely.
Speaker 2: So you do that with the brown sugar cinnamon version.
Speaker 1: Dude, every version, but that's the only version I'll eat,
Speaker 1: And I gotta say I don't. I don't eat pop
Speaker 1: tarts anymore, like I can't remember the last pop tart
Speaker 1: I had, But I can't walk down that aisle without
Speaker 1: looking at them and going, oh, man, if you fall
Speaker 1: into my basket, maybe you'll make it out of the store, right.
Speaker 2: I So I love brown sugar cinnamon. Since we're talking
Speaker 2: about personal preferences, but yeah, for the fruit ones. I
Speaker 2: used to be all strawberry as a kid, and it
Speaker 2: was just because I never ventured out. And once I
Speaker 2: grew up a little more and my tastes really started
Speaker 2: to develop, I found that cherry is actually the top fruit.
Speaker 1: Oh did not know.
Speaker 2: That until I don't know, maybe ten years ago.
Speaker 1: Okay, i'll have to. I mean this is I'm going
Speaker 1: to buy some pop tarts just to try some of
Speaker 1: these cherry. All right, I'll try cherry. They're frosted, I
Speaker 1: take it.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, I don't even know why they make
Speaker 2: them unfrosted. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Those are the kind of had to eat growing up
Speaker 1: here and there. They weren't even called pop tarts. I
Speaker 1: think they were called toaster pastries and there was no frosting. Insight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and your grandma candem right, but that.
Speaker 1: Does the cherry have sprinkles? Because I don't love the sprinkles,
Speaker 1: but it's just sort of part of the frosting so
Speaker 1: it doesn't stand out too much.
Speaker 2: Cherry has everything you want. Not only does it have sprinkles, chuck,
Speaker 2: it has like sugar crystals. Oh, yes, dude, you're gonna
Speaker 2: love cherry. Believe me. I expect a text later on
Speaker 2: with you thanking all right for recommending cherry pop tarts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ruvie's never had a pop tart, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to start on all right. So, uh, well,
Speaker 1: I guess we should probably take a break.
Speaker 2: We just we kind of got off course here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, okay, we left off at fruit scone and
Speaker 1: Smuckers and the launching of the original four, and we'll
Speaker 1: come back and pick it up right after this.
Speaker 3: Stop learn and stuff with Joshua job stuff fu shine up.
Speaker 2: Okay, chuck. So those original fruit scones, the prototype, the
Speaker 2: er pop tart, I guess I would call it if
Speaker 2: you're a weirdo. They were not exactly what you'd recognize
Speaker 2: as pop tarts today. I think if you put them
Speaker 2: next to a pop tart, you it wouldn't be like,
Speaker 2: you know, night and day. But one of the big
Speaker 2: different was the fruit scones had a diagonal score going
Speaker 2: across them, not quite from corner to corner, but a
Speaker 2: little more in the middle, and you could kind of
Speaker 2: break them in half like you would have like a
Speaker 2: grilled cheese sandwich kind of cut like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and none of these first ons for frostedy there
Speaker 1: we should point out.
Speaker 2: No, it took years, a couple of years, because all
Speaker 2: of the frostings that they came up with initially essentially
Speaker 2: either melted or caught fire in the toaster, so they
Speaker 2: did not have the frosting out of the gate yet.
Speaker 2: But one thing that pop Tarts still are that was
Speaker 2: part of the initial rollout was their package together, two
Speaker 2: per package, and the reason why it was just simply
Speaker 2: cost cutting, Like if they had individually packaged each pop tart,
Speaker 2: it would have cost them a lot more. But it
Speaker 2: also makes me wonder how many people over the last
Speaker 2: like sixty something years would have only eaten one pop
Speaker 2: tart if they were individually wrapped. You open that, you
Speaker 2: open the package, you got one, what are you gonna
Speaker 2: do like roll up the other one that you can't
Speaker 2: The foil is designed, I'm sure to tear open in
Speaker 2: ways that you can't reseal it, so you have to
Speaker 2: eat both of them essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was a little disappointed to know as a
Speaker 1: cost cutting measure because I was just like I thought, someone,
Speaker 1: you know, mister Posts decreed from on high they shall
Speaker 1: be eaten two at a time.
Speaker 2: Well that's actually the serving size if you read the
Speaker 2: back of the box, which is nuts because you could
Speaker 2: if it were just individually wrapped, you could say one
Speaker 2: pop tart is a serving and people would be used.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, true, those first pop tarts too, they were
Speaker 1: a little more rounded on the corners, not quite as
Speaker 1: squared off, unrecognizable, and honestly, they look delicious, even unfrosted.
Speaker 1: It looks more like and I know this is an
Speaker 1: ad I sent you and Jerry, like an old ad
Speaker 1: from the sixties. But and ads are made to make
Speaker 1: the food look beautiful. But it looks more like a
Speaker 1: pie than what they have out today, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like the edges are way more like a pie crust.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks kind of crimped or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think after this all happened, like you said,
Speaker 2: poor Dan Post was taking bite after bite and saying
Speaker 2: these are disgusting. But within four months of Kellogg's approaching Henkles,
Speaker 2: they had like a ready for market pop tart developed.
Speaker 1: Yeah or bruts gone Yeah, changed the name, I think
Speaker 1: pretty quickly to pop tarts, which I never knew this.
Speaker 1: This is a play on pop art, which is a
Speaker 1: big thing at the time with you know, Andy Warhol
Speaker 1: in his factory, And I had no idea that it
Speaker 1: was just sort of a little clever nod to that.
Speaker 2: I didn't either, I didn't realize pop tarts were quite
Speaker 2: so cool. Agreed, So the trademark for the brand was
Speaker 2: filed on June twentieth, nineteen sixty four. They started shipping
Speaker 2: out the first cases on September fourteenth, and they chose
Speaker 2: Cleveland as their test market. Yeah, Cleveland went bonkers for
Speaker 2: these things. I saw in the first two weeks. They
Speaker 2: sold ten million boxes of pop tarts.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: By December thirtieth, so just a couple months, like a
Speaker 2: million boxes, yes, ten million boxes of pop tarts. So
Speaker 2: they started shipping them in September. By the end of
Speaker 2: the year, they had to run an ad saying, hey, sorry,
Speaker 2: we ran out. We didn't think you guys are going
Speaker 2: to be this into it. We're working literally around the
Speaker 2: clock to get more pop tarts out to you. And
Speaker 2: by the end of the year they were making they
Speaker 2: had made a billion pop tarts and we're selling them
Speaker 2: like hot cakes, but more like hotcake flavored pop tarts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so if you're wondering, like what about Posts
Speaker 1: who sort of invented this, they weren't first to market.
Speaker 1: They finally released their Country Squares and they quickly were like, well,
Speaker 1: that name stinks, so everyone's getting us confused with the
Speaker 1: Royal Landowners. So they rebranded them to toast them fruit
Speaker 1: filled pop Ups sold that off in nineteen seventy one
Speaker 1: to Schultz and Birch Biscuit Company. They still make those.
Speaker 1: I think they're still the same name, even toast thems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there have been different you know, sort of like
Speaker 1: I said, I grew up with a sort of cheap version.
Speaker 1: I think they were called toaster pastries. Nibisco had one
Speaker 1: called Toastettes that they finally stopped selling in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two. Hillsbury. I will say the toaster Strudle when
Speaker 1: it came out in nineteen eighty five was a pretty big,
Speaker 1: hot eyedem I remember.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it was an unfrosted pop tart, much more
Speaker 2: pastry like, flaky pastry than what pop tart is. Yeah,
Speaker 2: key was the gimmick was that came with frosting separated,
Speaker 2: so you put frosting on it and I.
Speaker 1: Would then also squeeze it into your mouth at the end.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yes, And I was crazy for these things, and
Speaker 2: I guess I got a bad batch or something once
Speaker 2: I got sick off of it. And now just seeing
Speaker 2: those two words together makes my stomach turn. No way, Yes,
Speaker 2: I would. I couldn't eat a you wouldn't be in
Speaker 2: the same room as a toaster strudle.
Speaker 1: Again, that was like me with a beef turkey for
Speaker 1: solid ten years, you poor bastard, I know, all right,
Speaker 1: So they keep developing these things. The very first ones
Speaker 1: was just the pastry and the filling. They added that
Speaker 1: frosting in nineteen sixty seven, Like you said, once they
Speaker 1: came up with one that wouldn't slide off and kill
Speaker 1: your house. Basically, the first frosted ones were Dutch apple, concord,
Speaker 1: grape boy that sounds good, raspberry that sounds good, and
Speaker 1: of course brown sugar cinnamon. Then they added the sprinkles
Speaker 1: the year after that, and since then they've just been
Speaker 1: coming up with kind of new crazy flavors, sometimes obviously
Speaker 1: special editions, co branding, and just trying new things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So just to kind of put this into perspective,
Speaker 2: they out of the gate. Remember Post was supposed to
Speaker 2: be the first to do this. Pop Tarts just destroyed
Speaker 2: Posts and everybody else so much. But I think that
Speaker 2: they have something like eighty percent of the market share
Speaker 2: for that kind of product. In twenty fourteen, the Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal reported they had growth in sales, so every
Speaker 2: year they sold more than they had the year before,
Speaker 2: for thirty two straight years. Wow, And that in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two they sold three billion pop.
Speaker 1: Tarts boxes or individual tarts.
Speaker 2: I don't know. If you put it like that, then
Speaker 2: it's probably individual pop tarts. So I'm going to go
Speaker 2: back and revise my thing about that first year to
Speaker 2: one billion pop tarts, which is still impressive.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, once you get into those kind of numbers,
Speaker 1: you're kind of splitting hairs, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. Man, Thanks for saying that, because I
Speaker 2: was feeling pretty down about myself for a second.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, you're great. So in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: one of the little side products they made was called
Speaker 1: this is Kellogg's called the Danish go Round. They were
Speaker 1: trying to make it look more like a Danish, like
Speaker 1: a real Danish, because at like little ladies, garden parties
Speaker 1: and stuff, it's like, why make a Danish when you
Speaker 1: can just buy these. They didn't do so great. They
Speaker 1: crumbled up a lot, so they replaced them with the
Speaker 1: Danish Rings in seventy seven and then just got out
Speaker 1: of the Danish market in the eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is kind of said because Danishes are great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the cheese Danish.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's probably my favorite too. Yeah. In
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, they're like, Okay, we've got this whole
Speaker 2: pop tart thing down, Let's see what else we can
Speaker 2: do with this thing, and they came up with.
Speaker 1: Presto Pizza, which is a bad idea.
Speaker 2: It was a pizza version of pop tarts, and they
Speaker 2: put in the same box and everything. The problem was
Speaker 2: that there was not enough sauce and too much dough.
Speaker 2: Not anything else is the problem with it. It was
Speaker 2: just that it was too dowey, and so it went
Speaker 2: away pretty quick. But it was a good attempt, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I said it was a bad idea, I think
Speaker 1: it's actually a great idea. But you just you can't
Speaker 1: get enough sauce and cheese and whatever in that form
Speaker 1: to make it. Like like, you know, we make these
Speaker 1: when we go camping with pie irons. You ever heard
Speaker 1: of pie iron?
Speaker 2: Sure? You have? Yeah, like a hand pie iron, right, yeah?
Speaker 1: You like, you know, you take two pieces of bread,
Speaker 1: you butter up the little iron and then it's hinged
Speaker 1: and you put like we put pizza sauce and pepperoni
Speaker 1: and cheese and you squeeze them together and then you
Speaker 1: bake it over campfire, and that's thick enough to where
Speaker 1: you can actually have enough stuff. But at pop tart's
Speaker 1: just not thick enough.
Speaker 2: Well. Plus also now today, if you came out with that,
Speaker 2: everybody'd say, this isn't like a hot pocket. So what's
Speaker 2: the point?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, good point. You know.
Speaker 2: I'll but I'll bet it burns your tongue like a
Speaker 2: hot pocket when if you ate it too soon? Or
Speaker 2: a Gino's pizza roll? Is there anything that can burn
Speaker 2: a tongue worse than a Gino's pizza roll because you
Speaker 2: just you eat them too soon. You can't wait around
Speaker 2: for them to cool off enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a garbage food that I wasn't allowed to
Speaker 1: have much and we don't have at our house. But
Speaker 1: at Ruby's pool party this year, I just needed something
Speaker 1: easy to put in the oven to make for a
Speaker 1: bunch of kids. Yeah, and I got freaking pizza rolls.
Speaker 2: What do you think?
Speaker 1: They're not great? But the kids loved them.
Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't had one in a while. I'll have
Speaker 2: to go back and revisit or else maybe I'll just.
Speaker 1: Not You have a more sophisticated balant. Now I would
Speaker 1: just lean on nostalgia and what a great memory you have.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you for that.
Speaker 1: I don't think we need to go all through all
Speaker 1: these other things. I mean, they made pop tart bites,
Speaker 1: little crisps, and all sorts of little side products that
Speaker 1: kind of came and went. Like all products do, they
Speaker 1: try to spin things off and it usually doesn't work out.
Speaker 2: No, don't forget pop tart cereal that kind of made
Speaker 2: a splash for a minute.
Speaker 1: I didn't try that. I hadn't heard of that. Did
Speaker 1: you have that?
Speaker 2: What's weird is I remember eating it as a younger person,
Speaker 2: but apparently it came out in twenty eighteen, So either
Speaker 2: I made up the idea that I ate it, or
Speaker 2: I was way older than I remember when I ate it.
Speaker 1: It was just like seven years yeah, exactly when you
Speaker 1: were a child. Right.
Speaker 2: So essentially, what pop Starts finally did was it's like
Speaker 2: what we did, Like, we tried a TV show, we
Speaker 2: tried serious XM, we tried going on other people's shows
Speaker 2: and everyone's like, we just want to hear you podcast.
Speaker 2: That's essentially what pop Tarts did. They finally just put
Speaker 2: it all in to mostly just making pop tarts and
Speaker 2: new interesting flavors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it helped that no one called us after
Speaker 1: a while, right when the opportunities tried up.
Speaker 2: You know, I took it as you know, we just
Speaker 2: want to hear you podcast.
Speaker 1: Now I'm with you marketing wise, you know, we did
Speaker 1: an episode recently on Saturday Morning Cartoons and a lot
Speaker 1: of it to some listeners disappointment, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: was about marketing to children like sugar cereals and things
Speaker 1: like that during Saturday Morning cartoons and pop tarts. Was
Speaker 1: I mean, definitely one of the I was about to
Speaker 1: say worst offenders or but maybe I should just say
Speaker 1: one of the best at it, because eight ran tons
Speaker 1: and tons of commercials saying like put them in the
Speaker 1: lunch box, eat them for breakfast, have them as a snack,
Speaker 1: Like really, you can serve him warm, you can have
Speaker 1: them in between meals. You can eat him right out
Speaker 1: of the foil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get to that in a second.
Speaker 1: What right up? Right out of the foil?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do you do that?
Speaker 1: I have only done that in a pinch. I used
Speaker 1: to throw these in the backpack for camping trips when
Speaker 1: I was young, before they had a ton of like
Speaker 1: granola bars and stuff. Sure, like now there's so much
Speaker 1: of that, But back then, I'll just throw some pop
Speaker 1: Tarts in the backpack and I would eat him out
Speaker 1: of the package. But it's not great.
Speaker 2: It can be done, but no, it's not great.
Speaker 1: Which what I do then is is I tear off
Speaker 1: the edges, so I just have the frosted center.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and you leave the edges to nature. That's right,
Speaker 2: So the wolf's drunking you, Yeah, exactly. They did come
Speaker 2: up with a mascot for a very short time, which
Speaker 2: is weird because this is exactly the kind of brand
Speaker 2: that would have a mascot, right, Yeah, But they ditched
Speaker 2: Milton the Toaster pretty quickly when they debuted him in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, but they continued on, like you said, advertise,
Speaker 2: like any time you watched Saturday morning cartoons, they were
Speaker 2: on after school cartoons, they were on. Like if you
Speaker 2: were a kid watching TV, you probably saw a pop
Speaker 2: Tart commercial.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I looked up Milton the Toaster and I remember
Speaker 1: Milton the Toaster. So I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: reruns or what, but I remember seeing Milton firmly in
Speaker 1: my brain. I think these days. They adopted a slogan
Speaker 1: called crazy Good Yeah, and they've been running since sort
Speaker 1: of like two thousand and four, all kinds of ads
Speaker 1: under the crazy Good banner, and I think they ran
Speaker 1: run from two thousand and four to two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: That supposedly increased pop tart eating in ten to twelve
Speaker 1: year olds by twenty eight percent in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty big uptick for kids in pop
Speaker 1: tart sure.
Speaker 2: Speaking of their ads though, I don't remember Milton at all,
Speaker 2: but I do remember this one that I cannot find
Speaker 2: on the internet, but it goes pop pop pop pop,
Speaker 2: my feet can't stop pop pop pop pop, Kellogg's pop Tarts.
Speaker 1: I don't remember that one.
Speaker 2: There was also well I made that up too when
Speaker 2: I was eating pop tarts Cereal in twenty eighteen. There
Speaker 2: was also a campaign called so Hot They're Cool and
Speaker 2: another one called Snakula, So if you're a millennial or
Speaker 2: gen xer like that pretty much covers you. And then
Speaker 2: it seems like gen Z was getting the Crazy Good campaign,
Speaker 2: which is so okay, but it's like these crudely drawn
Speaker 2: pop tarts and they like kill each other to eat one.
Speaker 2: Another kind of thing. It's just weird and bizarre and
Speaker 2: off the wall interesting.
Speaker 1: Well, they took over the Citrus Bowl, the college football
Speaker 1: game played in Orlando a couple of years ago. It's
Speaker 1: now the pop Tarts Bowl, and I think it'll.
Speaker 2: Be in its third year on the next one.
Speaker 1: And they have, you know, these interesting tie ins where
Speaker 1: they have three different mascots and the MVP of the
Speaker 1: game picks the mascot, so you know, they're tying and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. They say it's kind of fun. I
Speaker 1: think they they like to tout they're just sort of
Speaker 1: out of the box thinking as far as marketing goes.
Speaker 1: And we should also say they spun that pop Tarts
Speaker 1: off from kew Loog into its own company. A lot
Speaker 1: of times food brands will do that. So pop Tarts,
Speaker 1: along with a few other things, was spun out into
Speaker 1: a company that sounds straight out of the movie Gatica.
Speaker 1: It's called kell Nova.
Speaker 2: It is kind of unsettling for some reason. But that
Speaker 2: pop Tart's bowl, the MVP doesn't just pick the maskcot,
Speaker 2: he picks the mascot to kill and eat, and they
Speaker 2: have like a giant pop Tart that's I think seventy
Speaker 2: three times the size of a regular pop tart, and
Speaker 2: for a little while they sold it for sixty dollars.
Speaker 2: They called it the party pastry, just a gent.
Speaker 1: It's a really good price.
Speaker 2: I thought so too. It seems like a real value.
Speaker 1: I mean, I saw this a picture of this thing
Speaker 1: on a kitchen table, and that's cheaper than a decent
Speaker 1: birthday cake.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, let's say you have eight pack of
Speaker 2: pop tarts.
Speaker 1: Well, they're sold in sixes though, right, I think they're.
Speaker 2: Sold six, eight, fourteen, a million. There's like a bunch
Speaker 2: of different ones, twenty four, I'm pretty sure. But I
Speaker 2: will tell you seventy three times the size of a
Speaker 2: regular pop tart does not translate to sixty dollars. No,
Speaker 2: So it is a really great value. You can't find
Speaker 2: it anymore though, unfortunately. Sorry. If you're a thrifty type
Speaker 2: and you buy one big party pastry and cut them
Speaker 2: into individual pop tart size shapes and then pack them
Speaker 2: away in the freezer, you can't do that anymore.
Speaker 1: Oh, I bet that centerpiece is so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll bet it is too.
Speaker 1: Have we taken a second break?
Speaker 2: I don't think so, man, I think we should now, all.
Speaker 1: Right, we'll take a second break and talk about everybody's
Speaker 1: favorite topic, helping safety. Right after this.
Speaker 3: Stop learn and stuff with Joshua job stuff.
Speaker 1: You shine up, all right. So we kind of made
Speaker 1: a joke earlier about the frosting sliding off and burning
Speaker 1: your kitchen down. I didn't find where it had ever
Speaker 1: burnt a house down. But over the decades, there have
Speaker 1: been a lot of reports about pop tart fires. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, it came a little more to the
Speaker 1: forefront of pop culture when syndicated humor columnists Dave Barry
Speaker 1: wrote about a report from Dover, Ohio, where there was
Speaker 1: a pop tart fire and the toaster, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was legit. I think they found the fire department
Speaker 1: did test and they found that if you just lead
Speaker 1: that thing in there, your toaster can shoot flames three
Speaker 1: feet high. And supposedly Dave Barry recreated this outdoors as
Speaker 1: part of his humor column.
Speaker 2: I saw a website called Flamingtoasters dot com. They did
Speaker 2: this experiment too. They put two in a toaster, and
Speaker 2: you need a malfunctioning toaster that never pops up right
Speaker 2: so that they continue to heat up because They're designed
Speaker 2: to make it through like a good long toaster cycle
Speaker 2: without catching fire. But if the toaster cycle never ends,
Speaker 2: the pop starts in big trouble. They got eighteen inch
Speaker 2: high flames in four minutes forty two seconds of toasting.
Speaker 2: But roundly round the internet, I've seen these flames. These
Speaker 2: aren't you like campfire flames. I've seen them described as
Speaker 2: like blow torch like. So there's like flinterstoring out of
Speaker 2: your toaster. And apparently the reason why is because of
Speaker 2: all of the high fruit toast corn syrup inside the filling,
Speaker 2: it heats up too much, kaboom, and it catches fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think those I mean, it's unique. It's
Speaker 1: not like toast will do that because that filling a
Speaker 1: with the high fruit toast corn syrup, but b that
Speaker 1: filling packed in that pastry just retains a lot of
Speaker 1: heat and it just, yeah, it's a pretty volatile can
Speaker 1: be a pretty volatile situation, I think. The Philly Inquirer
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one reported that the US Customer
Speaker 1: Product Safety Commission had seventeen reports of pop tart fires
Speaker 1: and eventually, of course, it would be a lawsuit. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, pop Tarts settled. The planet's attorney apparently
Speaker 1: threatened I don't know if it was Ingest or not
Speaker 1: to call in Dave Berry to go to trial, and
Speaker 1: pop Tart said, we'll give you two grand and they
Speaker 1: said twenty five hundred, and Poptart said twenty four hundred,
Speaker 1: and they said deal, deal, twenty four hundred.
Speaker 2: Bucks, right, I guess, and then the turning took like
Speaker 2: two thousand of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Probably.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that pop Tarts also gets,
Speaker 2: I guess bounced around for is because they're just not
Speaker 2: healthy in any way, shape or form. So unhealthy that
Speaker 2: there was another it wasn't a lawsuit, but they got
Speaker 2: pressure from this children's advertising review unit to remove the
Speaker 2: phrase made with real fruit from its packaging because the
Speaker 2: amount of fruit in it is so paltry that they
Speaker 2: don't even have the right to say that on their
Speaker 2: box anymore. And the reason why is because so serving
Speaker 2: sizes too of say frosted strawberry pop Tarts three hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy calories, thirty one grams of sugar, eight grams
Speaker 2: of fat. But here's the healthy part, one gram of
Speaker 2: fiber and four grams of protein, which can only be
Speaker 2: explained as accidental.
Speaker 1: Yeah, byproduct. I wonder if on the nutritional thing it
Speaker 1: also accounts for added butter.
Speaker 2: Right, with butter a million calories?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned the fruit content. I think in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one there were four plaintiffs at file the five
Speaker 1: million dollar class action suit that said, hey, this is
Speaker 1: false advertising. You got pictures of strawberries on this thing
Speaker 1: on the box, and you mentioned there wasn't much actual
Speaker 1: fruit in there. There was a quantification of that. The
Speaker 1: whole grain frosted strawberry pop tart contains less than two
Speaker 1: percent each of dried pear, apple, and strawberry, and the
Speaker 1: strawberry pop tart is the strawberry is the third of
Speaker 1: those fruits, which you know they're listened in order how
Speaker 1: much they have. So there's more pear and apple in
Speaker 1: a strawberry pop tart than strawberry.
Speaker 2: Right, So they're not healthy now, which so you can
Speaker 2: imagine my surprise when I was looking for articles about
Speaker 2: the health or the health impact or how unhealthy pop
Speaker 2: tarts are that I found an article titled can pop
Speaker 2: tarts really help with weight loss? I was like, are
Speaker 2: you kidding me? And if you read the article six
Speaker 2: paragraphs in they're like, no, absolutely not, I can't help
Speaker 2: with weight loss at all. But it kind of underscores
Speaker 2: this trend that I've noticed just in the last couple
Speaker 2: of months, chuck of just a slew of long tail,
Speaker 2: which means like really really specific articles clearly written by AI,
Speaker 2: and they're all the same. They'll be like a short introduction,
Speaker 2: then there'll be the table of contents, and then they'll
Speaker 2: go section, section, section, and all sections are like basically
Speaker 2: one paragraph. They're totally convoluted. The sections will repeat themselves,
Speaker 2: they're often giving contradictory information. It's just crap. And it's
Speaker 2: essentially the dead Internet theory finally come to pass, where
Speaker 2: it's just AI writing articles for other AI to be
Speaker 2: trained on, and we humans have just been pushed to
Speaker 2: the side and given articles with the clickbaity titles. Can
Speaker 2: pop tarts really help with weight loss?
Speaker 1: Dimly? But a book by accident off Amazon? There was
Speaker 1: a pottery book and she got it and she was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, He's like this isn't a real person,
Speaker 1: and she tried to look up the author didn't exist.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Obviously returned it and was not too happy.
Speaker 2: But A I was like man, I thought that was
Speaker 2: a sale.
Speaker 1: I do want to circle back though, to that lawsuit,
Speaker 1: the class action lawsuit. The judge, eventually, a federal judge
Speaker 1: dismissed it and said no reasonable consumer would see the
Speaker 1: entire product label reading the words frosted strawberry pop darts
Speaker 1: next to a picture of a toaster pastry coated in frosting,
Speaker 1: and reasonably expect that fresh strawberries would be the sole
Speaker 1: ingredient in the product. In other words, everyone knows what
Speaker 1: a pop tarted dummy go home exactly. You don't need
Speaker 1: it because it's healthy.
Speaker 2: I had forgotten that you hadn't wrapped that story ups.
Speaker 1: That's right, quite a.
Speaker 2: Boon diatle in the middle there.
Speaker 1: So because of the you know, food dyes and things
Speaker 1: like that, you're not going to get like a regular
Speaker 1: American pop tart in other countries. A lot of countries
Speaker 1: in Europe don't even have pop tarts at all, but
Speaker 1: they do have different versions that are a little better probably,
Speaker 1: And I know the UK doesn't have high fruitose corn
Speaker 1: syrup in their frosted strawberry sensation pop tart or red forty,
Speaker 1: yellow six and blue one dyes. They instead use paprika,
Speaker 1: beat root and extract from the annato tree to color.
Speaker 2: They're pop darts, yeah, which is an orange ready color
Speaker 2: I've read.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder how that affects the flavor paprika.
Speaker 2: But it's also I mean, like when you hear about this,
Speaker 2: like the EU or the UK having these standards that
Speaker 2: are just that makes American standard substandard as far as
Speaker 2: health goes. It's just so frustrating that nobody's looking out
Speaker 2: for American consumers like they do in the EU and UK.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, like use beat root, jerk.
Speaker 1: Agree. Should we go through a couple of these cultural touchstones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll mention the movie, the Netflix movie You're Unfrosted, which
Speaker 1: was at least directed and starred. I don't know if
Speaker 1: Jerry Seinfeld helped write it.
Speaker 2: Yes he did, and conceive it too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was It was a bad so bad it
Speaker 1: was a bad movie.
Speaker 2: It was so boring.
Speaker 1: I didn't watch it. I watched a little bit of
Speaker 1: it and realized that it was flaming garbage.
Speaker 2: Exactly the same for me. I think I made it
Speaker 2: ten minutes in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really bad. It got a couple of razzies.
Speaker 1: Amy Schumer was in it, like really quality people. It's
Speaker 1: just it was just a bad movie.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it happens, yeah, and it did happen with that one.
Speaker 1: What else?
Speaker 2: You can make your own pop tarts at home. I've
Speaker 2: actually done this. I made an apple cinnamon giant pop tart.
Speaker 2: M it turned out okay. I think the trick is
Speaker 2: the crust always seems too high falutin, so you're not
Speaker 2: really recreating the pop tart very well.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, but that's kind of the like I had
Speaker 1: one in a fancy restaurant once. They had it on
Speaker 1: the dessert. They called it their pop tart, and it
Speaker 1: was It was astounding, but it wasn't.
Speaker 2: A pop exactly. It has to have a certain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, trashy quality exactly.
Speaker 2: It does, and it's missing that when you make it
Speaker 2: at home.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty one, when we were bombing Afghanistan, we
Speaker 1: started dropping food, including pop tarts that the military, the
Speaker 1: US military said was supposed to be an icebreaker for
Speaker 1: those people, for the Afcan people, And then they also
Speaker 1: got criticized because they're like, hey, we're dropping food for
Speaker 1: these people to subsist on. Let's not drop garbage food
Speaker 1: as an icebreaker.
Speaker 2: Right, They're like, can't pop tarts really help with weight loss?
Speaker 2: They've also made several appearances on the Simpsons, most famously
Speaker 2: when Homer's trying to gain weight so he can get
Speaker 2: on disability and not have to work. I remember that
Speaker 2: he has he consults with doctor Nick, who tells him
Speaker 2: how to gain weight. In One of the things he
Speaker 2: says is instead of using bread, make a sandwich with
Speaker 2: two pop tarts.
Speaker 1: I bet that's so good, like a PV and J
Speaker 1: between two pop darts.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I could say that. Well, there's PB and
Speaker 2: J pop tarts, or there used to be, and those
Speaker 2: were pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean they've had lots of wacky flavors. I know,
Speaker 1: you looked up a bunch of those. Any of them
Speaker 1: stand out?
Speaker 2: Oh god, I don't have it in front of me.
Speaker 2: There there were a few that the ones that stand
Speaker 2: out to me, I wouldn't like, Like they have a
Speaker 2: whole ice cream shop like sub brand where it's like
Speaker 2: chocolate vanilla milkshake or something like that. Oh, it doesn't
Speaker 2: sound very good. No, there's like a co branded orange
Speaker 2: crush one the NW Roopier. There are a couple that
Speaker 2: I've tried that sounded good. I didn't really like like
Speaker 2: sugar cookie, which is a seasonal one in the winter,
Speaker 2: it wasn't as good as you'd think.
Speaker 1: What was the filling.
Speaker 2: It was like a chemically sugar cookie pasty dough.
Speaker 1: Okay, it just.
Speaker 2: Should have been better than it was. But there's a
Speaker 2: gingerbread one I haven't tried, and I would like to
Speaker 2: try that one. But I think ultimately for me, you
Speaker 2: just go back to like some of the originals, they're
Speaker 2: just time tested and they're so so good, like cherry
Speaker 2: or blueberry or strawberry or of course brown sugar cinnamon.
Speaker 1: Agreed, it just hit me they should partner up with
Speaker 1: bisc cough because they make that biscof butter. I bet
Speaker 1: that would be pretty good.
Speaker 2: I'm really surprised they haven't.
Speaker 1: And a couple of these we have some stats at
Speaker 1: the end, and a couple of these stood out to me.
Speaker 1: I think that was a twenty twenty four household panel survey.
Speaker 1: The ones that stand out to me are the reasons
Speaker 1: for people buying pop tarts here these days. Fifty six
Speaker 1: percent said convenience and thirty percent said it brings back childhood.
Speaker 2: Memories ostensibly good memories, yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course, and then the other one that stood out
Speaker 1: was seventy two percent of pop start buyers said they
Speaker 1: ate them themselves, and these were adults, and fifty four
Speaker 1: percent said other adults in the house would eat them,
Speaker 1: and only twenty five percent said they were for their kids.
Speaker 1: So it seems like gen x is buying and eating
Speaker 1: these pop tarts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the mails they're keeping them for themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One that stood out to me is forty four percent
Speaker 2: of American surveyed said they eat them at least once
Speaker 2: a week, and nine percent eat them every day.
Speaker 1: That's a lot.
Speaker 2: That is a lot.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: The other thing that was really surprising is twelve percent
Speaker 2: of people put them in the refrigerator or freezer and
Speaker 2: then eat them cold. I've never even heard that. That
Speaker 2: sounds like madness. And then, uh, one of the other things, Chuck,
Speaker 2: did you see the thing about the mystery pop tart?
Speaker 1: No, so they came up, mister t close.
Speaker 2: Replace the tea with the knee, get rid of all
Speaker 2: the gold in the mohawk, replace them with a pop
Speaker 2: tart that has a mustache and and sunglasses and a
Speaker 2: hat like a mystery person, and you've got the misterye
Speaker 2: pop tarts. It was a campaign they ran in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, and it was like the full shab, Like
Speaker 2: there's a QR code and you can go online and
Speaker 2: guess what the mystery flavor was. It was roundly hated
Speaker 2: it like found disgusting. Someone guessed it was cheese it's
Speaker 2: someone guessed it was a Swiss cheese pop tart. Someone
Speaker 2: guess garlic and onion. It turned out it was an
Speaker 2: everything Bagel pop tart, and everyone said, we hate that,
Speaker 2: get it off of our shelves.
Speaker 1: Ah. I do love Everything Bagel, almost everything, but I
Speaker 1: could see where that might not because I even liked
Speaker 1: that Jenny's Everything Bagel ice cream I thought was so good.
Speaker 2: Oh I didn't try that.
Speaker 1: A lot of people hated it. I loved it.
Speaker 2: To me, I'd be like, no, I'm not gonna waste
Speaker 2: my time with anything but gooey butter cake or the
Speaker 2: almond crisp one.
Speaker 1: Oh as far as the Genny's goes, Yeah so good. Yeah, agreed, Uh,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? No? I think I gained a
Speaker 1: few pounds just doing this episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't decide if I'm going to run out
Speaker 2: and buy some.
Speaker 1: More or just you know, leave it be I'm gonna
Speaker 1: buy some Well, let me know.
Speaker 2: I'll live vicariously through you. Okay, you know what I'll do.
Speaker 1: But I'll get I'll have to get the Tinman brown
Speaker 1: sugar just because I can't not. And I'll only get
Speaker 1: one other box and I'll get that frosted cherry. Great,
Speaker 1: I'll let you know.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, while you're doing that, Chuck, how about some
Speaker 2: listener mail action.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is about another MTV follow up about the
Speaker 1: show their game show Remote Control. Hey, guys, when I
Speaker 1: was a sophomore in high school in nineteen ninety and
Speaker 1: we had to do a project in world history about Mesopotamia.
Speaker 1: So my friends and I made our own remote control
Speaker 1: game show with quiz questions about the subject. We had
Speaker 1: a little brother be our videographer and had bowls of
Speaker 1: cereal following our head as if we missed the question.
Speaker 1: We had so much fun creating it. We're so proud
Speaker 1: of it. All the kids knew what it was, but
Speaker 1: I think mister Hall was a bit confused, so what
Speaker 1: was happening? But we got an a whoo who Thanks
Speaker 1: for the great episode, for the amazingness that you put
Speaker 1: out into the world. I adore the show and your
Speaker 1: friendship that is a big fan from Oh h I
Speaker 1: Oh go buck Eys Michelle.
Speaker 2: Nice, Michelle, thank you for that one. That was a
Speaker 2: sohio story if I've ever heard one.
Speaker 1: Agreed.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Michelle and tell us
Speaker 2: about something sweet from your childhood that we made you
Speaker 2: think of again, we love that kind of thing. You
Speaker 2: can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom with
Speaker 2: a pop tart, and send it off to Stuff podcast
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.