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Podcast Summary: Stuff You Should Know - Pop Tarts: No Fruit Necessary
Episode Overview In this episode of *Stuff You Should Know*, hosts Josh and Chuck dive into the history and evolution of Pop-Tarts, the beloved fruit-filled toaster pastries that have become a staple in American breakfast culture. They explore the origins of Pop-Tarts, their marketing strategies, health implications, and the various flavors that have been introduced over the years.
Key Themes and Discussions
- Historical Context of Convenience Foods
- The emergence of Pop-Tarts in the 1960s is tied to significant social changes, particularly second-wave feminism, which encouraged women to enter the workforce and necessitated quick, convenient meal options.
- The rise of convenience foods, including Pop-Tarts, filled the gap created as traditional homemaking roles evolved.
- The Origin of Pop-Tarts
- Kellogg's and Post: The episode discusses the history of the Kellogg brothers and their competition with C.W. Post, who founded the Post cereal company after being inspired by Kellogg’s cornflakes.
- Development of Pop-Tarts: Pop-Tarts were conceived by Post, originally called "Country Squares," but Kellogg's scrambled to create their version, leading to the eventual launch of Pop-Tarts in 1964.
- Product Evolution
- Initial Pop-Tarts were un-frosted, with a diagonal score down the middle for easy handling.
- The addition of frosting occurred in 1967 after extensive testing to ensure the frosting would not burn in the toaster.
- The incorporation of flavors such as brown sugar cinnamon and cherry, which became popular with consumers.
- Marketing Strategies
- Pop-Tarts have utilized aggressive marketing campaigns, especially targeting children through Saturday morning cartoons.
- The podcast highlights how advertising strategies have evolved, with campaigns such as "Crazy Good" and "Snackula" aimed at different demographics over the years.
- Health and Safety Concerns
- Pop-Tarts have faced criticism for their health implications, with minimal fruit content and high sugar levels. A class action lawsuit was dismissed, citing that reasonable consumers wouldn’t expect them to be health foods.
- The episode discusses reports of fires caused by toasting Pop-Tarts, leading to safety concerns about their flammable filling.
- Cultural Impact
- Pop-Tarts have made appearances in various media, including *The Simpsons*, and have been referenced in discussions about nostalgia and childhood comfort foods.
- Mention of the "mystery Pop-Tart" campaign that introduced an everything bagel flavor, which consumers found unappealing.
Key Takeaways
- Cultural Significance: Pop-Tarts are more than just a food item; they encapsulate shifts in society, family dynamics, and consumer culture.
- Market Dominance: Kellogg's Pop-Tarts maintain a significant share of the market, continually innovating with flavors and marketing campaigns.
- Health Awareness: Despite their popularity, awareness around the nutritional value of Pop-Tarts prompts discussions about healthier alternatives in the snack food industry.
Closing Notes The episode juxtaposes nostalgic childhood memories with contemporary discussions on health and safety, illustrating how a simple pastry can reflect broader societal changes. Whether enjoyed toasted or straight out of the foil, Pop-Tarts remain a fascinating subject of discussion in American food culture.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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1:01There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free trial at audible.com. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:38Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:48Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. Jerry's here, too, talking about her grandmother and what she did with Pop-Tarts. And it actually sounds kind of good. Oh, man, my grandmother wouldn't have, there wouldn't have been a Pop-Tart anywhere near her house. Oh, no, she was like that, huh? Well, one of them. My one more, I mean, one was sort of the modern grandmother, my mom's mom. They had, like, TV and stuff like that, a VCR. But Granny Bryant, my dad's mother, was very old school, sort of rural Tennessee, and, like, she didn't have a television, she didn't have anything like a Pop-Tart.
2:23Right. She's like, if I didn't can it, you're not going to eat it. Yeah. She just kind of had the big jar of grease on the stove that, like, she never bought oil in her life. She just kept reusing the same stuff. Man, I'll bet that tasted good, though. Yeah, Granny Bryant, the best. Well, that's funny you said that one of your other grandmother, your mom's mom, was modern. Yeah. Because that's actually, some theories say that that is what Pop-Tarts grew out of, that there was this huge shift in the 60s, usually pointed to a second wave feminism, where women began to essentially say like, this whole traditional housewife thing is basically domestic servitude and I'm not down for it anymore.
3:07I'm going to work in the workplace. And so convenience food grew up almost immediately to kind of fill that void or whatever, the vacuum that was left as mom started to move out of the house into the workplace and people still needed to eat. That's right. And I feel like this is one where we assume everyone knows what a Pop-Tart is. Oh, yeah. And we get punished for that in emails. So a Pop-Tart is a maybe a breakfast item. But as we'll see in the old ads, it was it could be for lunch or a snack or whatever. But it is a toaster pastry. It's a little sort of fruit-filled faux pastry that you stick in your toaster or not and toast it up or not.
3:52And it came about, and we're going to, you know, we need to thank Livia, but we definitely want to thank Diana Stampler for the website Promote Michigan. Because as Livia found and as I found, when it comes to Pop-Tart origin stories, Diana Stampler's is the bomb diggity. She did her homework. Yeah, she had a lot of great detail that other places didn't have. So big thanks to that website. But Pop-Tarts came out of the 1960s, and we're going to have to retell a little bit of our live episode about the Kellogg Serial Corporation and the Kellogg Brothers, because that's where this story starts. So we'll give you kind of a quick little overview, right?
4:31Yeah, that was our live episode from Sydney. It was good. Yeah. So the Kellogg Brothers, William Keith or Will Keith and John Harvey Kellogg, They ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which essentially was a health spa, health resort, dedicated to getting you to poop with precise perfectness, right? Yeah, and other things. And this was in the 19th century. And so as a result of this, one of the things that came out of it was the Kellogg brothers inventing new types of food. And one of the foods that they invented were cornflakes. and almost as importantly as them inventing cornflakes was one of their guests, one of their patients coming along.
5:13His name was C.W. Post. That's right. He loved those cornflakes and spent a little time there and said, you know what, I'm going to start making my own cereal. I remember a lot of that. I guess when you do the live show several times, I remember a lot of details from that one, by the way. But like individual jokes even. Oh, lay it on me, buddy. Oh, just made me think of the Elton John album title. Was that, but I can't remember the name of the machine, the electric bath something. Yeah, that's true. It sounded like an Elton John. Electric light bath. Electric light bath, was that it? Yes, I remember that.
5:52It was like one of those one-person steam rooms where your head stuck out, but it was lights. Exactly. Yeah. So that's what was going on at Battle Creek. But C.W. Post tries that Kellogg cornflake, says, I love this stuff. I'm going to form a company to make it. And the Post company was formed in 1895. And it was about 10 or 11 years after that that Kellogg got into the cereal business, like legit-wise, and established their Battle Creek Toasted Cornflake Company. Yeah. So they're like, we're going to sell these things outside of the sanitarium. And now Post and Kellogg's were direct competitors in this new emerging cereal market that those two companies created out of thin air.
6:36By the time the 60s rolled around, a good half a century later, breakfast cereal was a thing. It had been healthy, healthy, healthy. And then I think starting in 1948, Sugar Crisp was the first sugar cereal that came out. And it was like, wow, they went full bore right out of the gate. Yeah. I mean, with sugar crisps. I think they call it golden crisp now because you like a mob with torches and pitchforks would come after you if you called your cereal sugar crisp. Yeah. But it's the same thing. And that came out in the 40s. So by the time the 60s were around, you had a lot of different sugary cereals and Kellogg's and Post were making a lot of them.
7:14But the upshot of the cereal market being established is there's not a lot of new things you can do. You can come up with a new cereal and it'll be kind of a hit or not. And that's about all you can do. So they started looking for entirely new products to kind of fill, like I said, this vacuum that was being left by second wave feminism, getting women out of the house and into the workplace. So they were like, we need to come up with convenience foods that are even more convenient than cereal. Yeah. Then pouring something out of a box and adding milk. And then reading the back of the box. Or water in the case of, was that Friday?
7:50You better put some water in that damn... I love that one. So classic. So this was also a time a post-war sort of food science boom was happening where they were making all this sort of dehydrated space-age astronaut food and stuff like that. So that had a lot to do with it as well. And Post was experimenting with that stuff and experimenting with wrapping things in foil, dehydrating or partially dehydrating stuff. and they said, all right, we're making these Gainsburgers, this dog crumbly, you know, looks like a meat burger for your dog that's wrapped in foil that you break apart. Do you remember those?
8:31Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're still around, right? Or did they go away? They went away in the 90s, I read. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I definitely remember Gainsburgers because I always remember thinking, like, those are the luckiest dogs in the world. Do you? Yeah. It was, like, that was... Like, my family would never buy that stuff. No, same here. That was like luxury dog food at the time. But now it'd be like, I wouldn't even feed this to a rat. Of course not. Yeah. So they were experimenting with like foil-wrapped things. And as you'll see, that's what Pop-Tarts were wrapped in. So that's why that's kind of key.
9:01And they said, all right, we've invented a pastry filled with fruit, like a fruit mixture. And we figured out how to make it shelf-stable so it doesn't need to go in the fridge. And how to have it not collect bacteria over time. Yeah. And toasters on the counter were a thing now instead of just having to use the oven for everything. And so they shaped them into a toaster sized thing, wrapped it in foil. And in October 1963, the Battle Creek Inquirer newspaper reported that these country squares, which is what they're calling them, is the latest and greatest food that you're going to want on your breakfast table.
9:41Yeah, and it took me a little while, but I wondered if country squares was a play on country squire. What's Country Squire? It was a landowner, a rural landowner in medieval England. Hmm. I doubt it, but you never know. Okay. They call them Country Squires. Let's just leave it at that. Okay, Josh? Fine. But this was Post. This wasn't Kellogg's who ended up making the Pop-Tart. This was Post who was breaking new ground with these little handheld toaster heated pastries, right? That's right. The problem was that I don't know if the Battle Creek Inquirer got in there and had a spy or else if there was a really dumb vice president that was getting exposure in the Battle Creek Inquirer.
10:26But Post was not ready to go to market with these things. They had a recipe, but they didn't know how they were going to package it, market it, get it out to stores. So they had many months of development left ahead of them when news broke. Well, it just so happens that the higher ups at companies like Kellogg read the Battle Creek Enquirer because they're in the same town. And this gave them the ability to catch up because they were caught totally off guard by this. But it gave them the ability to catch up, scramble and create their own versions. And I believe Pop-Tarts ended up beating country squares to market.
11:01Yeah. I think the vice president of Kellogg says, what is this country squares? And someone said it's a rural landowner in England. And no, there was a vice president, though, named William Lamothe. And he had a guy working there in the kitchen named Doc Joe Thompson. And he said, get to work. We need our own pastry. And it would be their first foray into any kind of little bakery product like that. And they wanted a partner because they, you know, again, they were just cereal people. So plus everybody likes to have a partner. Yeah, exactly. So they went to the Heckman Biscuit Company, which was conveniently also in Michigan.
11:38They had been around selling Dutch cookies since the beginning of the late 19th century, door to door. And by the 1960s, when this is happening, their division of the United Biscuit Company of America, which would eventually become Keebler in 66, right there in Grand Rapids, they had a great modern industrial bakery, and it was a really sort of a great partnership out of the gate. Grand Rapids, by the way, just a little personal aside, is where I learned that I actually love frog legs. Oh, really? Yeah, there was this dinner theater in Grand Rapids that my family used to go to when I was growing up in Toledo.
12:15The frog leg theater? On their buffet, they had frog legs. And I tried them once and I was like, oh my God, these are amazing. I don't think I would eat one now, but when I was like 8, 9, 10, I would eat some frog legs. I don't know where it was, buddy, but I tried frog legs on a buffet in the 1970s or early 80s as well. Yeah, and I thought, hey, this tastes like chicken. Kind of. It's the weird skin that really throws it off, though. These were fried, so I don't remember the skin. And this is a very distant memory, but I'm with you. I couldn't eat a frog now. These were not fried. These were, like, braised.
12:54No, mine were fried. So back to—thanks for indulging me. Sure. So back to the Heckman Biscuit Company. At the time, they were making stuff like macaroons, butter cookies, vanilla wafers, windmills, ginger snaps, all your favorite like old timey cookies this company was making. And to make all this stuff, they had just a really knockout dynamite production facility. So it was a good idea to go to them. Apparently, the Heckman Company wasn't fully on board with this. But there was a guy named William Post, no relation to the Post cereal company, who was in this, did work for Heckman at their Grand Rapids factory.
13:37And he's like, I'll do this. I'll take this project on. Yeah. And it wasn't an official thing. I think it was a handshake agreement at first. They started, you know, testing out versions, giving them to their kids to try, of course, which is sort of the usual story when food science is involved. And Dan, I think the son of William Post, again, supposedly no relation. Quite a coincidence, though, don't you think? It is quite a, yeah, almost suspicious. Yeah, I agree. But little Dan said, they taste like cardboard. And they said, all right, let's go back to the drawing board. And he said, well, these explode when you put them in the toaster, Dad.
14:18And they said, all right, well, let's poke some holes in it. Like, you know how you score a pie for the same reason that you bake in an oven? They started scoring the dough for the, you know, and kind of solved that problem out of the gate. Well, yeah, that's why there's little holes in Pop-Tarts still today. That's right, because they will explode. It's true. Fruit expands, I guess, or fruit-like stuff. And they initially set on, as Daniel Day-Lewis would say, fruit scones. The rest of us would say fruit scones. and I think there were four flavors out of the gate. Strawberry, blueberry, and apple currant that were partnered with Smuckers, another great idea, to provide their fruit filling.
15:03And then, oh baby, the fourth one, the all-time great, brown sugar cinnamon. Yep, that's the best one, hands down. Oh, you too, huh? Oh, yes. Okay, great. What a relief. Yeah, some Lipton blackberry tea and brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts in the evening was just a great way to wind down after a long day in third grade. So what is that garbage Jerry said before we recorded? She talked about her grandmother making... Not that part. Making a blueberry, I believe, blueberry Pop-Tarts that are unfrosted and buttering them. Okay, well, I was going to hang on to that for my final tip, but I might as well launch into it now.
15:44That is the secret to Pop-Tarts. Put it in the toaster. Toast it up For me, brown sugar cinnamon Then you get a stick of butter I think I've said this on another episode And maybe our breakfast episode And then you just take that stick of butter Don't even like cut off a piece Just unwrap it a little bit Flip it over to the non-frosted side And just sort of rub it on there And then Don't forget about that frosted side, my friend Flip it back over Butter up that frosted side a little And the edges and get those corners because the problem with Pop-Tarts to me is they're always a little too dry where there's no filling, and this solves a problem.
16:24It's buttery. It's delicious. I highly recommend it. Okay. If you mentioned that before, then there's a 100 % chance that I followed up with this. I heard of that from Jessica Simpson. Oh, what? Who mentioned, I guess when she was pregnant, she was craving buttered Pop-Tarts, and I hadn't heard of it until then. It's the finishing touch. It's the cherry on top. It really finishes it off nicely. So you do that with the brown sugar cinnamon version? Dude, every version. But that's the only version I'll eat. And I've got to say, I don't eat Pop-Tarts anymore. Like, I can't remember the last Pop-Tart I had.
17:01But I can't walk down that aisle without looking at them and going, oh, man, if you fall into my basket, maybe you'll make it out of the store. So I love brown sugar cinnamon since we're talking about personal preferences. But for the fruit ones, I used to be all strawberry as a kid. And it was just because I never ventured out. And once I grew up a little more and my tastes really started to develop, I found that cherry is actually the top fruit. Oh. Did not know that until, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago. Okay. I'll have to, I mean, this is, I'm going to buy some Pop-Tarts just to try some of these again.
17:38Try cherry. All right. I'll try cherry. They're frosted. I take it. Yes. I mean, I don't even know why they make them unfrosted. That's crazy. Those are the kind I had to eat growing up here and there. They weren't even called Pop-Tarts. I think they were called toaster pastries, and there was no frosting in sight. Yeah, and your grandma canned them. But does the cherry have sprinkles? Yes. Because I don't love the sprinkles, but it's just sort of part of the frosting, so it doesn't stand out too much. Cherry has everything you want. Not only does it have sprinkles, Chuck, it has, like, sugar crystals.
18:09Oh. Yes, dude. You're going to love cherry. Believe me, I expect a text later on with you thanking me for recommending cherry Pop-Tarts. Yeah, Ruby's never had a Pop-Tart, so we're going to blow her mind. That's a good one to start on. All right, so, well, I guess we should probably take a break. Yeah, we just kind of got off course here. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we left off at Fruit Scone and Smuckers and the launching of the original four, and we'll come back and pick it up right after this.
18:44Stop missing the line
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19:36See all the nominees and place your vote at iHeartPodcastAwards.com. Audible is a proud sponsor of the Audible Audio Pioneer Award. Explore the best selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals all in one easy app. Audible. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free trial at Audible.com. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with a basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault.
20:10I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been unimaginable without AI, and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us.
20:43I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
21:08Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles Stuff you should know Okay, Chuck, so those original fruit scones, the prototype, the Ur-Pop-Tart, I guess you'd call it if you're a weirdo, they were not exactly what you'd recognize as Pop-Tarts today. I think if you put them next to a Pop-Tart, it wouldn't be like, you know, night and day. But one of the big differences was the fruit scones had a diagonal score going across them. Not quite from corner to corner, but a little more in the middle. And you could kind of break them in half. Yeah. Like you would have like a grilled cheese sandwich kind of cut like that.
21:51Yeah. And none of these first ones were frosted either, we should point out. No, it took years, a couple of years, because all of the frostings that they came up with initially essentially either melted or caught fire in the toaster. So they did not have the frosting out of the gate yet. But one thing that Pop-Tarts still are, that was part of the initial rollout, was they're packaged together, two per package. And the reason why was just simply cost cutting. Like if they had individually packaged each Pop-Tart, it would have cost them a lot more. But it also makes me wonder how many people over the last like 60 something years would have only eaten one Pop-Tart if they were individually wrapped.
22:36Fools. You open that, you open the package, you got one. What are you going to do? Like roll up the other one? You can't. The foil is designed, I'm sure, to tear open in ways that you can't reseal it. So you have to eat both of them essentially. Yeah. I was a little disappointed to know it was a cost cutting measure because I was just It's like, I thought someone, you know, Mr. Post decreed from on high, they shall be eaten two at a time. Well, that's actually the serving size if you read the back of the box, which is nuts. Because you could, if it were just individually wrapped, you could say one Pop-Tart is a serving and people would be used to that.
23:14Yeah, true. Those first Pop-Tarts too, they were a little more rounded on the corners. Not quite as squared off. Unrecognizable. And honestly, they look delicious. Even unfrosted, it looks more like, and I know this is an ad. I sent you and Jerry, like an old ad from the 60s, and ads are made to make the food look beautiful. But it looks way more like a pie than what they have out today, you know? Yeah, like the edges are way more like a pie crust. Yeah, it looks kind of crimped or whatever. Yeah. So I think after this all happened, like you said, poor Dan Post was taking bite after bite and saying, like, these are disgusting.
23:52But within four months of Kellogg's approaching Henkel's, they had like a ready for market Pop-Tart developed. Yeah, or Pritzkahn. They changed the name, I think, pretty quickly to Pop-Tarts, which I never knew this. This was a play on pop art, which is a big thing at the time with, you know, Andy Warhol and his factory. And I had no idea that it was just sort of a little clever nod to that. I didn't either. I didn't realize Pop-Tarts were quite so cool. Agreed. So the trademark for the brand was filed on June 20th, 1964. They started shipping out the first cases on September 14th, and they chose Cleveland as their test market.
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24:34And Cleveland went bonkers for these things. I saw in the first two weeks they sold 10 million boxes of Pop-Tarts. Oh, my God. By December 30th, so just a couple months. Wait, 10 million boxes? Yes, 10 million boxes of Pop-Tarts. So they started shipping them in September. By the end of the year, they had to run an ad saying, hey, sorry, we ran out. We didn't think you guys were going to be this into it. We're working literally around the clock to get more Pop-Tarts out to you. And by the end of the year, they were making, they had made a billion Pop-Tarts and were selling them like hotcakes, but more like hotcake flavored Pop-Tarts.
25:13Yeah. And so if you're wondering, like, well, what about Post, who sort of invented this? They weren't first to market. They finally released their country squares. And they quickly were like, well, that name stinks. So everyone's getting us confused with the rural landowners. So they rebranded them to Toastum Fruit-Filled Pop-Ups, sold that off in 1971 to Schultz and Birch Biscuit Company. They still make those. I think they're still the same name, even. Toastums. Yeah, and there have been different, you know, sort of, like I said, I grew up with this sort of cheap version. I think they were called toaster pastries.
25:51Nabisco had one called Toastettes that they finally stopped selling in 2002. Hillsbury, I will say the toaster strudel, when it came out in 1985, was a pretty big hot item, I remember. Yeah, because it was an unfrosted Pop-Tart, much more pastry, like flaky pastry than a Pop-Tart is. Yeah. The key was, the gimmick was, it came with frosting separated, so you put frosting on it. And I was crazy for these. And then also squeeze it into your mouth at the end. Exactly, yes. And I was crazy for these things, and I guess I got a bad batch or something once. Oh, no. And I got sick off of it, and now just seeing those two words together makes my stomach turn.
26:33No way. Yes, I would. I couldn't be in the same room as a toaster strudel again. That was like me with beef jerky for a solid 10 years. You poor bastard. I know. All right, so they keep developing these things. The very first ones was just the pastry and the filling. They added that frosting in 1967. Like you said, once they came up with one that wouldn't slide off and kill your house, basically. The first frosted ones were Dutch apple, Concord grape. Boy, that sounds good. Raspberry, that sounds good. And of course, brown sugar cinnamon. Then they added the sprinkles the year after that. And since then, they've just been coming up with kind of new crazy flavors, sometimes obviously special editions, co-branding and just trying new things.
27:23Yeah. So just to kind of put this into perspective, they out of the gate. Remember, Post was supposed to be the first to do this. Pop-Tarts just destroyed Post and everybody else so much that I think that they have something like 80 percent of the market share for that kind of product. In 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported they had growth in sales. So every year they sold more than they had the year before for 32 straight years. And then in 2022, they sold three billion Pop-Tarts. Boxes or individual tarts? I don't know. If you put it like that, then it's probably individual Pop-Tarts. So I'm going to go back and revise my thing about that first year to one billion Pop-Tarts, which is still impressive.
28:12Yeah. I mean, once you get into those kind of numbers, you're kind of splitting hairs, you know? Yeah, it's true, man. And thanks for saying that because I was feeling pretty down about myself for a second. No, no, no, no. You're great. So in 1968, one of the little side products they made was called, this is Kellogg's, called the Danish Go Round. They were trying to make it look more like a Danish, like a real Danish, because at like little ladies' garden parties and stuff, it's like, why make a Danish when you can just buy these? They didn't do so great. They crumbled up a lot, so they replaced them with the Danish rings in 77 and then just got out of the Danish market in the 80s.
28:48Yeah, which is kind of sad because Danish's are great. Yeah, the cheese Danish? Yes. I think it's probably my favorite, too. Yeah. In 1971, they're like, okay, we've got this whole Pop-Tart thing down. Let's see what else we can do with this thing. And they came up with Presto Pizza. Hmm. Bad idea. It was. A pizza version of Pop-Tarts. And they put it in the same box and everything. Um, the problem was that there was not enough sauce and too much dough. Not anything else was the problem with it. It was just that it was too doughy. And so it went away pretty quick, but it was a good attempt, I guess.
29:25Yeah. When I said it was a bad idea, I think it's actually a great idea, but you just, you can't get enough sauce and cheese and, and whatever in that form to make it like, like, you know, we make these when we go camping with pie irons. You ever heard of pie irons? Sure. Oh, you have? Yeah. Oh, okay. Like a hand pie iron, right? Yeah. Like, you know, you take two pieces of bread, you butter up the little iron, and then it's hinged. And you put, like, we put pizza sauce and pepperoni and cheese, and you squeeze them together, and then you bake it over a campfire. And that's thick enough to where you can actually have enough stuff.
29:57But a Pop-Tart's just not thick enough. Well, plus also now today, if you came out with that, everybody would say, this isn't like a Hot Pocket. So what's the point? Yeah, yeah, good point. You know, but I'll bet it burns your tongue like a Hot Pocket if you ate it too soon. Or a Gino's pizza roll. Is there anything that can burn a tongue worse than a Gino's pizza roll? Because you just you eat them too soon. You can't wait around for them to cool off enough. Yeah, that's a garbage food that I wasn't allowed to have much. And we don't have at our house. But at Ruby's pool party this year, I just needed something easy to put in the oven to make for a bunch of kids.
30:35and I got freaking pizza rolls. What did you think? They're not great, but the kids loved them. Oh, I haven't had one in a while. I'll have to go back and revisit it or else maybe I'll just not. You have a more sophisticated palate now. I would just lean on nostalgia and what a great memory you have. Okay, thank you for that. I don't think we need to go through all these other things. I mean, they made Pop-Tart Bites, little crisps, and all sorts of little side products that kind of came and went, like all products do. They try to spin things off, and it usually doesn't work out. No, and don't forget Pop-Tart cereal.
31:09That kind of made a splash for a minute. I didn't try that. I hadn't heard of that. Did you have that? What's weird is I remember eating it as a younger person, but apparently it came out in 2018. So either I made up the idea that I ate it, or I was way older than I remember when I ate it. Right. It was just like seven years ago. Yeah, exactly. When you were a child. Right. So essentially what Pop-Tarts finally did was, it's like what we did. Like we tried a TV show. We tried SiriusXM. We tried going on other people's shows. And everyone was like, we just want to hear you podcast. That's essentially what Pop-Tarts did.
31:47They finally just put it all in to mostly just making Pop-Tarts in new, interesting flavors. Yeah, well, it helped that no one called us after a while. Right. When the opportunities dried up, you know. I took it as, you know, we just want to hear you podcast. No, I'm with you. Marketing wise, you know, we did an episode recently on Saturday morning cartoons and a lot of it, to some listeners disappointment, as it turns out, was about marketing to children like sugar cereals and things like that during Saturday morning cartoons. and Pop-Tarts was, I mean, definitely one of the, I was about to say worst offenders, but maybe I should just say one of the best at it.
32:28Because they ran tons and tons of commercials saying like, put them in the lunchbox, eat them for breakfast, have them as a snack. Like really, you can serve them warm. You can have them in between meals. You can eat them right out of the foil. Yeah, we'll get to that in a second. What, right out of the foil? Yeah, do you do that? I have only done that in a pinch. I used to throw these in the backpack for camping trips when I was young before they had a ton of like granola bars and stuff. Like now there's so much of that. But back then I would just do some Pop-Tarts in the backpack and I would eat them out of the package.
33:03But it's not great. It can be done, but no, it's not great. Which what I do then is I tear off the edges so I just have the frosted center. Oh, yeah. And you leave the edges to nature. That's right. To the wolves cracking you. Exactly. Exactly. They did come up with a mascot for a very short time, which is weird because this is exactly the kind of brand that would have a mascot, right? Yeah. But they ditched Milton the Toaster pretty quickly when they debuted him in 1971. But they continued on, like you said, advertising. Like, any time you watch Saturday morning cartoons, they were on. After school cartoons, they were on.
33:43Like, if you were a kid watching TV, you probably saw a Pop-Tart commercial. Yeah. Yeah, I looked up Milton the Toaster, and I remember Milton the Toaster. So I don't know if it was reruns or what, but I remember seeing Milton firmly in my brain. I think these days they adopted a slogan called Crazy Good. Yeah. And they've been running since sort of like 2004, all kinds of ads under the Crazy Good banner. and I think they ran one from 2004 to 2008 that supposedly increased Pop-Tart eating in 10 to 12 year olds by 28 % in 2005 which is a pretty big uptick for kids in Pop-Tarts. For sure. Speaking of their ads though, I don't remember Milton at all but I do remember this one that I cannot find on the internet but it goes pop, pop, pop, pop, my feet can't stop, pop pop pop pop kellogg's pop tarts i don't remember that one there was also um well i made made that up too when i was eating pop tart cereal in 2018 there was also a campaign called so uh hot they're cool and another one called snackula so if you're a millennial or gen x or like that pretty much covers you and then it seems like gen z was getting the crazy good uh campaign which is But it's like these crudely drawn Pop-Tarts and they like kill each other to eat one another kind of thing.
35:10It's just weird and bizarre and off the wall. Interesting. Well, they took over the Citrus Bowl, the college football game played in Orlando a couple of years ago. It's now the Pop-Tarts Bowl. And I think it'll be in its third year on the next one. And they have, you know, these interesting tie ins where they have three different mascots. and the MVP of the game picks the mascot. So, you know, they're tying in stuff like that. They say it's kind of fun. I think they like to tout their just sort of out-of-the-box thinking as far as marketing goes. And we should also say they spun that Pop-Tarts off from Kellogg into its own company.
35:51A lot of times food brands will do that. So Pop-Tarts, along with a few other things, was spun out into a company that sounds straight out of the movie Gattaca. It's called Kelanova. It is. It is kind of unsettling for some reason. But that Pop-Tarts Bowl, the MVP doesn't just pick the mascot. He picks the mascot to kill and eat. And they have like a giant Pop-Tart that's, I think, 73 times the size of a regular Pop-Tart. And for a little while, they sold it for$60. They called it the Party Pastry. I feel like that's a really good price. I thought so, too. It seems like a real value. I mean, I saw a picture of this thing on a kitchen table, and that's cheaper than a decent birthday cake.
36:36Yeah. I mean, let's say you have an eight-pack of Pop-Tarts. Well, they're sold in sixes, though, right? I think they're sold six, eight, 14, a million. There's like a bunch of different ones. 24, I'm pretty sure. But I can tell you, 73 times the size of a regular Pop-Tart does not translate to$60 more. So it is a really great value. You can't find it anymore, though, unfortunately. Sorry. If you're a thrifty type and you buy one big party pastry and cut them into individual Pop-Tart-sized shapes and then pack them away in the freezer, you can't do that anymore. Ooh, I bet that centerpiece is so good.
37:14Yeah, I'll bet it is, too. Have we taken a second break? I don't think so, man. I think we should now. All right. We'll take a second break and talk about everybody's favorite topic, health and safety, right after this.
37:43New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast. And every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And the winner of the iHeart Podcast Award is... You can decide who takes home the 2026 iHeart Podcast Awards Podcast of the Year by voting at iHeartPodcastAwards.com.
38:22now through February 22nd. See all the nominees and place your vote at iHeartPodcastAwards.com. Audible is a proud sponsor of the Audible Audio Pioneer Award. Explore the best selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals all in one easy app. Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free trial at Audible.com. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan.
38:57It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been unimaginable without AI, and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan.
39:30Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents in small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
40:05All right. So we kind of made a joke earlier about the frosting sliding off and burning your kitchen down. I don't I didn't find where it had ever burnt a house down. But over the decades, there have been a lot of reports about Pop-Tart fires. In 1993, it came a little more to the forefront of pop culture when syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry wrote about a report from Dover, Ohio, where there was a Pop-Tart fire in the toaster. and, you know, it was legit. I think they found the fire department did tests and they found that if you just leave that thing in there, your toaster can shoot flames three feet high and supposedly Dave Barry recreated this outdoors as part of his humor column.
40:48I saw a website called flamingtoasters.com. They did this experiment too. They put two in a toaster and you need a malfunctioning toaster that never pops up. Right. So that they continue to heat up because they're designed to make it through like a good long toaster cycle without catching fire, but the toaster cycle never ends. The Pop-Tart's in big trouble. They got 18-inch high flames in four minutes, 42 seconds of toasting. But roundly, around the internet, I've seen these flames. These aren't your like campfire flames. I've seen them described as like blowtorch-like. So there's like flames going out of your toaster.
41:27and apparently the reason why is because of all of the high fructose corn syrup inside the filling if it heats up too much kaboom and it catches fire yeah and i think those um i mean it's unique it's not like toast will do that because that filling a with the high fructose corn syrup but b that that filling packed in that pastry just retains a lot of heat right and it just yeah it's a pretty volatile, can be a pretty volatile situation. I think the Philly Inquirer in 2001 reported that the U.S. Customer Product Safety Commission had 17 reports of Pop-Tart fires. And eventually, of course, there would be a lawsuit.
42:08In 1995, Pop-Tart settled. The plaintiff's attorney apparently threatened, I don't know if it was in jest or not, to call in Dave Barry to go to trial. And Pop-Tart said, we'll give you two grand. And they said,$2 ,500. and Pop-Tarts said$2 ,400 and they said deal. $2 ,400 bucks. Right. I guess. And then the attorney took like$2 ,000 of that. Yeah, probably. So one of the things that Pop-Tarts also gets, I guess, bounced around for is because they're just not healthy in any way, shape, or form. Yeah. So unhealthy that there was another, it wasn't a lawsuit, but they got pressure from this children's advertising review unit to remove the phrase made with real fruit from its packaging.
42:58Yeah. Because the amount of fruit in it is so paltry that they don't even have the right to say that on their box anymore. And the reason why is because, so a serving size is two of, say, frosted strawberry Pop-Tarts, 370 calories, 31 grams of sugar, 8 grams of fat. But here's the healthy part, one gram of fiber and four grams of protein, which can only be explained as accidental. Yeah, a byproduct. I wonder if on the nutritional thing, it also accounts for added butter. Right. With butter, a million calories. Yeah, you mentioned the fruit content. I think in 2021, there were four plaintiffs that filed a$5 million class action suit that said, hey, this is false advertising.
43:48You got pictures of strawberries on this thing on the box. And you mentioned there wasn't much actual fruit in there. There is a quantification of that. The whole grain frosted strawberry Pop-Tart contains less than 2 % each of dried pear, apple, and strawberry. And the strawberry Pop-Tart is the third of those fruits, which, you know, they're listed in order of how much they have. So there's more pear and apple in a strawberry Pop-Tart than strawberry. Right. So they're not healthy. No. So you can imagine my surprise when I was looking for articles about the health or the health impact or how unhealthy Pop-Tarts are, that I found an article titled, Can Pop-Tarts Really Help With Weight Loss?
44:34I was like, are you kidding me? And if you read the article, six paragraphs in, they're like, no, absolutely not. It can't help with weight loss at all. But it kind of underscores this trend that I've noticed just in the last couple of months, Chuck, of just a slew of long tail, which means like really, really specific articles clearly written by AI. And they're all the same. There'll be like a short introduction. Then there'll be the table of contents. And then they'll go section, section, section. And all the sections are like basically one paragraph. They're totally convoluted. The sections will repeat themselves.
45:13They're often giving contradictory information. It's just crap. And it's essentially the dead internet theory finally come to pass, where it's just AI writing articles for other AI to be trained on. And we humans have just been pushed to the side and given articles with the clickbaity titles. Can Pop-Tarts really help with weight loss? Emily bought an AI book by accident off Amazon. It was a pottery book. And she got it and she was like, wait a minute. He's like, this isn't a real person. And she tried to look up the author. It didn't exist. Wow. Yeah. Obviously returned it and was, you know, not too happy.
45:50But I was like, man, I thought that was a sale. I do want to circle back, though, to that lawsuit, the class action lawsuit. The judge eventually, a federal judge dismissed it and said no reasonable consumer would see the entire product label reading the words Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts next to a picture of a toaster pastry. coated in frosting and reasonably expect that fresh strawberries would be the sole ingredient in the product. Right. In other words, everyone knows what a Pop-Tart is, dummy. Go home. Exactly. You don't eat it because it's healthy. I had forgotten that you hadn't wrapped that story up.
46:25Oh, that's all right. Quite a boondoggle in the middle there. So because of the, you know, food dyes and things like that, you're not going to get like a regular American Pop-Tart in other countries. A lot of countries in Europe don't even have Pop-Tarts at all. But they do have different versions that are a little better, probably. I know the UK doesn't have high fructose corn syrup in their frosted strawberry sensation Pop-Tart. Or red, 40, yellow, 6, and blue 1 dyes. They instead use paprika, beetroot, and extract from the annatto tree to color their Pop-Tarts. Yeah, which is an orange-ready color, I've read.
47:03Yeah, I wonder how that affects the flavor. Paprika? But it's also, I mean, like when you hear about this, like the EU or the UK having these standards that are just, that makes American standards substandard as far as health goes. It's just so frustrating that nobody's looking out for American consumers like they do in the EU and UK, you know? Yeah, I agree. Like use beetroot, jerk. Agree. Should we go through a couple of these cultural touchstones? Yeah. I'll mention the movie, the Netflix movie last year, Unfrosted, which was at least directed and starred. I don't know if Jerry Seinfeld helped write it.
47:42Yes, he did. And conceived of it, too. Yeah, it was a bad... So bad. It was a bad movie. It was so boring. I didn't watch it. I watched a little bit of it and realized that it was flaming garbage. Exactly the same for me. I think I made it 10 minutes in. Yeah, it's really bad. It got a couple of Razzies. Amy Schumer was in it. Like, really quality people. It was just a bad movie. Sometimes that happens. Yeah. And it did happen with that one. What else? You can make your own Pop-Tarts at home. I've actually done this. I made an apple cinnamon giant Pop-Tart. It turned out okay. I think the trick is the crust always seems too highfalutin, so you're not really recreating the Pop-Tart very well.
48:26No. Yeah, but that's kind of the, like, I had one in a fancy restaurant once. Once they had it on the dessert, they called it their Pop-Tart, and it was astounding, but it wasn't a Pop-Tart. Exactly. It has to have a certain... Yeah. Trashy quality. Exactly. It does, and it's missing that when you make it at home. In 2021, when we were bombing Afghanistan, we started dropping food, including Pop-Tarts, that the military, the U.S. military, said was supposed to be an icebreaker for those people, for the Afghan people. And then they also got criticized because they were like, hey, we're dropping food for these people to subsist on.
49:06Let's not drop garbage food as an icebreaker. Right. They're like, can't Pop-Tarts really help with weight loss? They've also made several appearances on The Simpsons, most famously when Homer's trying to gain weight so he can get on disability and not have to work. I remember that. He consults with Dr. Nick, who tells him how to gain weight. And one of the things he says is, instead of using bread, make a sandwich with two Pop-Tarts.
49:36I bet that's so good. Like a PB &J between two Pop-Tarts? Oh, yeah. I can see that. Well, there's PB &J Pop-Tarts, or there used to be, and those were pretty good. Yeah. I mean, they've had lots of wacky flavors. I know you looked up a bunch of those. Any of them stand out? Oh, God, I don't have it in front of me. No. There were a few that, the ones that stand out to me, I wouldn't like. Like they have a whole ice cream shop like sub-brand where it's like chocolate vanilla milkshake or something like that. No. It doesn't sound very good. Nah. There's like a co-branded Orange Crush one, A &W Root Beer.
50:13There are a couple that I've tried that sounded good that I didn't really like, like Sugar Cookie, which is a seasonal one in the winter. It wasn't as good as you'd think. What was the filling? It was like a chemically sugar cookie pasty dough. Oh, okay. It just should have been better than it was. But there's a gingerbread one I haven't tried, and I would like to try that one. But I think ultimately, for me, you just go back to, like, some of the originals. They're just time-tested, and they're so, so good. Like cherry or blueberry or strawberry or, of course, brown sugar cinnamon. Agreed. It just hit me.
50:51they should partner up with Biscoff because they make that Biscoff butter. I bet that would be pretty good. I'm really surprised they haven't. And a couple of these, we have some stats at the end, and a couple of these stood out to me. I think that was a 2024 household panel survey. The ones that stand out to me are the reasons for people buying Pop-Tarts here these days. 56 % said convenience. And 30 % said it brings back childhood memories. Ostensibly good memories. Yeah, of course. And then the other one that stood out was 72 % of Pop-Tart buyers said they ate them themselves. And these were adults.
51:36And 54 % said other adults in the house would eat them. And only 25 % said they were for their kids. So it seems like Gen X is buying and eating these Pop-Tarts. Yeah, themselves. They're keeping them for themselves. Yeah. One that stood out to me is 44 % of Americans surveyed said they eat them at least once a week. And 9 % eat them every day. That's a lot. That is a lot. The other thing that was really surprising is 12 % of people put them in the refrigerator or freezer and then eat them cold. I've never even heard of that. That sounds like madness. And then one of the other things, Chuck, did you see the thing about the mystery Pop-Tart?
52:17No. So they came up. Mr. T? Close. Replace the T with the E. Get rid of all the gold in the mohawk. Replace it with a Pop-Tart that has a mustache and sunglasses and a hat, like a mystery person. And you've got the mystery Pop-Tarts. It was a campaign they ran in 2021. And it was like the full shebang. Like there's a QR code and you can go online and guess what the mystery flavor was. It was roundly hated. It, like, found disgusting. Someone guessed it was Cheez-Its. Someone guessed it was a Swiss cheese Pop-Tart. Someone guessed garlic and onion. It turned out it was an everything bagel Pop-Tart.
52:54And everyone said, we hate that. Get it off of our shelves. Ah, I do love everything bagel, almost everything. But I could see where that might not, because I even like that, uh, Ginny's everything bagel ice cream I thought was so good. Oh, I didn't try that. A lot of people hated it. I loved it. To me, I'd be like, no, I'm not going to waste my time with anything, but gooey butter cake or the almond crisp one. Oh, as far as the Ginny's goes? Yeah, so good. Yeah, agreed. You got anything else? No, I think I gained a few pounds just doing this episode. Yeah, I can't decide if I'm going to run out and buy some more or just, you know, leave it be.
53:34I'm going to buy some. Well, let me know. I'll live vicariously through you, okay? You know what I'll do, bud? I'll have to get the cinnamon brown sugar just because I can't not. And I'll only get one other box, and I'll get that frosted cherry. Great. I'll let you know. Okay. Well, while you're doing that, Chuck, how about some listener mail action? Yeah, this is about another MTV follow-up about their game show Remote Control. Hey, guys. When I was a sophomore in high school in 1990, we had to do a project in world history about Mesopotamia. so my friends and I made our own remote control game show with quiz questions about the subject.
54:12We had a little brother be our videographer and had bowls of cereal fall on our head as if we missed the question. We had so much fun creating it. We're so proud of it. All the kids knew what it was but I think Mr. Hall was a bit confused as to what was happening. But we got an A. Woohoo. Thanks for the great episode and for the amazingness that you put out into the world. I adore the show and your friendship. that is a big fan from O-H-I-O, go Buckeyes, Michelle. Nice, Michelle. Thank you for that one. That was a Sohio story if I've ever heard one. Agreed. If you want to be like Michelle and tell us about something sweet from your childhood that we made you think of again, we love that kind of thing.
54:53You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom with a Pop-Tart and send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
55:19Hey, it's Joel. And Matt. From HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. Yeah, each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And the winner of the iHeart Podcast Award is...
55:53You can decide who takes home the 2026 iHeart Podcast Awards Podcast of the Year by voting at iHeartPodcastAwards.com now through February 22nd. See all the nominees and place your vote at iHeartPodcastAwards.com. Audible is a proud sponsor of the Audible Audio Pioneer Award. Explore the best selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals all in one easy app. Audible. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free trial at Audible.com. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you.
56:31Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
From the publisher
Pop Tarts are a legendary breakfast treat in the United States. They're fruit-filled toaster pastries with very little fruit. But who cares right? It's all about that toasty goodness.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
