TOAST WITH THE MOST
POP-TARTS HAVE BEEN GOING STRONG FOR SIX DECADES — WITH HELP FROM ANDY WARHOL AND STRESSED PARENTS
It’s hard to flip through a daily paper, tune into the radio news or doom-scroll the online Cassandras without being assailed by scolding over our unhealthy eating habits.
Whether it’s the evils of ultra-processed foods, the sugary sins of that morning OJ or the whiplash warnings over booze — one a day’s OK one day, complete abstinence the next — nanny-state meddlers have bombarded us with food advice since the first lowly spud was sliced into a salt-laden side of fries.
It is no mean feat, therefore, that the sinfully sweet Pop-tart has not only survived the onslaught of Good Food finger-waggers over the past 60 years but has positively thrived, gracing the cupboards of frazzled families in a form scarcely changed since its debut in 1964.
To that we owe a debt to the culinary foresight of William (Bill) Post, who died in February at age 96. Generally considered the father of the Pop-tart, he was approached by cereals giant Kellogg’s to create an “ingenious hack on toast-and-jam.”
One of its biggest rivals, Post Consumer Brands (no relation), was first to the kitchen table with its Country Squares — later called Post Toast-em Pop-ups — but its pastry and urban appeal both fell flat and Kellogg’s filled the void with its own version just six months later.
Originally known as Fruit Scones, they could easily have faded into breakfast obscurity between groaning shelves of Fruit Loops, Cap’n Crunches and Count Choculas if not for Andy Warhol and his gaudy soup cans.
Borrowing from his buzzy Pop-art movement — and aided by an early TV advertising campaign featuring “Milton the animated toaster” — marketing executives co-opted the zeitgeist of the time and renamed the toastable pastries Pop-tarts.
Post had been plant manager for a food company in Michigan when he was tasked with creating a longshelf-life portable snack that did not require refrigeration, something pioneered — rather off-puttingly for those eating breakfast — by the semi-moist dog food known as Gaines-burgers.
He used his own children — aged nine and 13 at the time — as taste testers and had a prototype ready in just four months, overcoming the skepticism of colleagues who scoffed at the heavy machinery, including one piece of equipment weighing 60 tonnes, required in its manufacture.
“The guys at the bakery thought it was crazy,” he recalled years later.
The madness did not stop there. When the Pop-tart was test-marketed in Cleveland in November 1964 with four unfrosted flavours — apple-currant, strawberry, blueberry and brown sugar-cinnamon — the initial run of 10,000 samples “blew off the shelves” in two weeks and was swiftly ramped up to 45,000.
It wasn’t enough. Kellogg’s was forced to take out full-pages ads in local papers apologizing for running out of stock. “Oops!” they read. “We goofed …Will you excuse us, please?”
Though Post gets most of the glory for “redefining the breakfast food market,” Kellogg’s also credits (Doc) Joe Thompson and his kitchen crew with bringing the Poptart to fruition, and Post himself was always keen to share the spotlight, praising his “amazing team” for bringing a “fine product” to market “in the span of just four months.”
We take our insta-everything world for granted today, but the Pop-tart was revolutionary for its time by offering breakfast in 30 seconds, tailor-made for working families and the growing number of women entering the workforce in the 1960s and ’70s. It also marked the beginning of a flood of toastable food options.
Frosting and sprinkles followed in 1967-68, while specials such as bite-sized Mini Crisps, two-in-one Splitz and even a short-lived cereal were launched in the ensuing decades.
Now available in more than 25 flavours, Pop-tarts still sell more than 2.5 billion a year on average — despite the health-food hand-wringing, the racks of nutrition bars and the bacon-and-egg Mcmuffin.
Though available in Canada, the U.K., New Zealand and a few other markets, Pop-tarts are shamelessly stay-at-home snacks; in 2001, U.S. troops dropped them in Afghanistan as a gesture of American goodwill.
And where would preppers be without them? Walmart reports that — alongside bread, batteries and fuel containers — Pop-tarts are one of its most popular products during hurricane events.
For his part, Post was a fan till the end, wearing Pop-tart socks and driving a car with POPTART licence plates. He favoured strawberry and estimated he’d packed away more than 10,000 Pop-tarts in his lifetime.
In a 2022 interview he described his devotion: “We have a seniors group at church and you have to bring your lunch every once in a while. I always bring my Poptarts and of course they all think, ‘Poor guy, that’s all he can eat.’ But I’ve always liked them as a snack.”
Between mouthfuls, comedian Jerry Seinfeld would nod in agreement. In May his ode to the Poptart — Unfrosted — is being released on Netflix, which describes the film as a “tale of ambition, betrayal and menacing milkmen” that “changed the face” of breakfast forever.
Perhaps the only mystery left about the Pop-tart is the way we eat them, with a survey showing half of consumers scoff them cold. As Seinfeld himself might say: “What’s up with that?”
When it comes to favourite flavours, Kellogg’s insists not much has changed over the past 60 years, with strawberry and brown-sugar cinnamon leading the pack.
In 2004, the company developed a slick marketing strategy as an ode to a new generation’s passion for the Pop-tart.
Its catchline soon entered everyday lexicon and pretty much sums up the breakfast staple’s appeal and longevity in two words — “crazy good.”