Pop Tarts: No Fruit Necessary

Summary

Stuff You Should Know – “Pop Tarts: No Fruit Necessary”

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Date: November 13, 2025
Episode Theme:
A deep dive into the invention, evolution, cultural place, and notorious “fruit” content of the iconic Pop Tart. The hosts trace Pop Tart’s journey from a response to social changes in the 1960s, through its sticky, explosive history, and into its marketing shenanigans and nostalgia-soaked place in American snack food culture.

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Episode Overview

Josh and Chuck take listeners on a nostalgic, detailed ride through the history of Pop Tarts: their creation as a convenience food, the culinary arms race between cereal giants, weird marketing decisions, flavor innovations, lawsuits, and why the “fruit” in your Pop Tart is probably apple (but barely). The hosts riff with their signature warmth, trading personal buttering hacks, flavor confessions, and cultural references, while not shying away from the nutritional ugly truth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Pop Tarts as a Social Phenomenon (02:38)

• The rise of convenience foods like Pop Tarts is tied to social shifts in the 1960s — particularly second wave feminism and more women in the workplace.
  • Chuck: “Convenience food grew up almost immediately to kind of fill… the vacuum that was left as moms started to move out of the house into the workplace and people still needed to eat.” (03:20)

2. Cereal Wars: The Kellogg & Post Rivalry (04:11–11:01)

• Origin stories start with the Kellogg brothers (health spa inventors of Corn Flakes) and patient-turned-rival C.W. Post.
• By the 1960s, the cereal market was saturated, pushing companies to invent even-more-convenient breakfast foods.

3. Accidental Innovation & The Race to Market (08:53–11:01)

• Post first develops a shelf-stable, foil-wrapped “country squares” pastry—leaked before they were ready.
• News spurs Kellogg into action; they partner with Michigan’s Heckman Biscuit Co. (later Keebler) to fast-track their own version, eventually beating Post to market with Pop Tarts.

Josh: “Pop Tarts ended up beating country squares to market.” (11:01)

4. Design Tweaks and Flavor Secrets (14:02–18:15)

• Early prototypes “tasted like cardboard” and sometimes exploded in toasters; scoring the dough and poking holes solved the issue.
• Original flavors: strawberry, blueberry, apple currant (with Smucker’s), and brown sugar cinnamon.
  • Chuck: “Oh baby, the fourth one, the all-time great brown sugar cinnamon.” (15:09)
• Pro Butter Tip: Butter your Pop Tart, on both sides, for the ultimate upgrade (15:57–16:51).

5. Pop Tarts Hit the Market (23:29–25:51)

• Launched in Cleveland in 1964, Pop Tarts immediately sold out — 10 million boxes in two weeks, a billion Pop Tarts by year’s end.
• Packaging in pairs was a cost-saving measure — and became a portion-defying standard.

6. Naming & Branding: From ‘Fruit Scones’ to Pop Art (24:39–24:55)

• “Pop Tarts” is a clever play on “pop art,” reflecting the product’s 1960s pop culture roots.

7. Post’s Fate & The Imitators (25:51–26:43)

• Post’s Country Squares flopped, rebranded as Toast’em Pop-Ups—others joined the toaster pastry fray, like Nabisco’s Tostettes and Pillsbury’s Toaster Strudel.

8. Constant Innovation and Restaurant Knock-offs (27:12–28:01; 49:23–49:55)

• Frosted versions didn’t arrive until 1967 due to toaster-fire issues.
• Offshoots like Danish rings, pizza versions, and “Pop Tart Bites” fizzled; homemade/fancy-restaurant Pop Tarts lack the “trashy” appeal of the real thing.

9. Marketing Genius (or Evil?) & Mascots (32:41–35:52)

• Pop Tarts blanketed kids’ cartoons with ads and clever slogans (“So Hot They’re Cool,” “Crazy Good”).
• Milton the Toaster was a short-lived mascot in 1971.
  • Josh: “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 eat them right out of the foil.” (33:19)
• Pop Tarts’ relentless marketing to children: an example of sugar-food advertising’s golden age.

10. Cultural Touchstones (48:49–52:12)

• Netflix’s 2023 Jerry Seinfeld movie “Unfrosted”: panned by both hosts (“flaming garbage” – 49:13).
• Military air-dropped Pop Tarts in Afghanistan as ‘icebreaker’ food (50:00).
• The Simpsons: Dr. Nick advises Homer to use Pop Tarts as sandwich bread when gaining weight (50:40).

11. Flavors, Failures, and Weirdness (26:43; 51:06–54:14)

• Wacky flavors: from ice cream shop riffs to a universally reviled Everything Bagel “Mr. E” mystery flavor (53:33–54:14).

12. Health, Safety, and Lawsuits (41:21–47:44)

• Pop Tart fires are rare, but possible with malfunctioning toasters; Dave Barry popularized the danger in a humor column (42:04).
• 1995: Lawsuit over Pop Tart fires settled for $2,400.
• Nutrition: Almost completely “junk food” (31g sugar in two tarts), yet people sued over “made with real fruit” claims. Lawsuits lost—courts said nobody really thinks Pop Tarts are health food.
  • Josh: “There’s more pear and apple in a strawberry Pop Tart than strawberry.” (45:33)
  • Judge (recap): “Everyone knows what a Pop Tart is. Dummy. Go home.” (47:31)

13. International Differences (47:44–48:43)

• UK Pop Tarts have no high fructose corn syrup or artificial dyes, instead using paprika, beetroot, and annatto for color.

14. Consumption Patterns & Nostalgia (52:15–53:14)

• Pop Tarts’ market: Majority are bought and eaten by adults (not kids), 44% of Americans eat them at least weekly, 9% daily.
• 56% cite “convenience,” 30% “childhood memories,” as reasons to buy.
  • Josh: “It seems like Gen X is buying and eating these Pop Tarts… themselves.” (53:02)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On why Pop Tarts come in pairs:
  “It would have cost them a lot more. But it also makes me wonder how many people… would have only eaten one Pop Tart if they were individually wrapped. Fools.”
  — Chuck, 22:32

• Flavor Confessions:
  “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.”
  — Chuck, 15:15

• Butter Hack:
  “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…”
  — Josh, 15:58

• On Lawsuits:
  “No reasonable consumer would… reasonably expect that fresh strawberries would be the sole ingredient.”
  — Recapping federal judge dismissal, 47:31

• Marketing & Nostalgia:
  “Pop Tarts finally just put it all in to mostly just making Pop Tarts and new, interesting flavors.”
  — Josh, 32:09

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Grandma stories & 1960s context: 01:47–03:25
• Kellogg & Post cereal wars: 04:11–07:42
• Birth of Pop Tarts & race to market: 08:53–11:01
• Design & prototyping mishaps, flavor launch: 14:02–16:26
• Butter Pop Tarts, flavor debate: 15:57–18:15
• Launch and initial Pop Tart mania: 23:29–25:51
• Branding & pop art connection: 24:39–24:55
• Marketing, mascots, slogans: 32:41–35:52
• Pop Tart fires & lawsuits: 41:21–47:44
• Cultural references (Unfrosted, Simpsons, military): 48:49–52:12
• Health & international differences: 44:01–48:43
• Market data, nostalgia, who eats them: 52:15–53:14

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Episode’s Language & Tone

Conversational, nostalgic, irreverent, and richly anecdotal — Josh and Chuck riff on personal memories, deliver trivia, and level with listeners about the culinary reality and health hazards of the Pop Tart while never losing a light, friendly tone.

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Useful for Those Who Haven’t Listened:

This summary unpacks how Pop Tarts rose out of shifting American culture and ended up as a near-ironic snack icon, laying bare their nutritional emptiness and commercial cunning. Along the way, you’ll get fun personal tips (How to butter a Pop Tart!), brand trivia, litigation oddities, and a realistic understanding of why you probably want one right now… but shouldn’t eat them every day.

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For full flavor, start with brown sugar cinnamon. And, maybe, a stick of butter.

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. Jerry's here too, talking about her grandma and what she did with Pop Tarts, and it actually sounds kind of good.

[Josh Clark]

Oh man, my grandmother wouldn't have. There wouldn't have been a Pop Tart anywhere near her house.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh no. She was like that, huh?

[Josh Clark]

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 and 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. She's like, if I didn't can it, you're not going to eat it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. She's 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man, I'll bet that tasted good, though.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Granny Bryant, the best.

[Chuck Bryant]

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, this whole traditional housewife thing is basically domestic servitude. And I'm not down for it anymore. I'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 moms started to move out of the house into the workplace and people still needed to eat.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. And I feel like this is one where we assume everyone knows what a Pop Tart is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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. And it came about and we're going to. You know, we need to thank Livia, but we definitely want to thank Diana Stampfleur for the website Promote Michigan, because as Livia found and as I found, when it comes to Pop Tart origin stories, Diana Stamplers is the bomb diggity.

[Chuck Bryant]

She did her homework.

[Josh Clark]

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 in the 1960s. And we're gonna have to retell a little bit of our live episode about the Kellogg Cereal Corporation and the Kellogg brothers, because that's where this story starts. So we'll give you kind of a quick little overview. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That was our live episode from Sydney. It was good.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And other things.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 and inventing new types of food. And one of the foods that they invented were Corn Flakes. And almost as importantly as them inventing Cornflakes, was one of their guests, one of their patients coming along. And his name was C.W. post.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. He loved those Corn Flakes 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, lay it on me, buddy.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, just made me think of the Elton John album title. Was that. But I can't remember the name of the machine. Electric Bath something. It sounded like an Elton John Electric Light Bath. Electric Light Bath was in it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, I remember that. It was like one of those one person steam rooms where your head stuck out, but it was lights.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So that's what was going on at Battle Creek. But CW 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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, that those two companies created out of thin air. By the time the 60s roll 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 Crisp, 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. But 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Than pouring something out of a box.

[Chuck Bryant]

And adding milk and then reading the back of the box.

[Josh Clark]

Or water in the case of. Was that Fridays?

[Chuck Bryant]

You better put some water on that. Damn, I love that one.

[Josh Clark]

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 Gains Burgers. This dog crumbly, you know, looks like a meat burger for your dog that's wrapped in foil that you break apart.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do you remember those?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, yeah. They're still around, right? Or did they go away?

[Chuck Bryant]

They went away in the 90s, I read.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, interesting. Yeah, I definitely remember Gains Burgers. Cause I always remember thinking like, those are the luckiest dogs in the world.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do you? Yeah, it was like, my family would.

[Josh Clark]

Never buy that stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, no.

[Chuck Bryant]

A rat.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So they're 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. And they said, all right, so 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. 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 Enquirer newspaper reported that these country squares, which is what they're calling them, is the latest and greatest food that you're gonna want on your breakfast table.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And it took me a little while, but I wondered if country squares was a play on Country Squire.

[Josh Clark]

What's Country Squire?

[Chuck Bryant]

It was a landowner, a rural landowner in medieval England.

[Josh Clark]

Hmm. I doubt it. But you never know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. They call them country squares. 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?

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Problem was the. 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. But 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. And 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. Yeah, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I think the vice president of Kellogg says, what is this country squares? And someone said, it's a rural landowner in England. No, there was a vice president, though, named William Lamoth, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, plus, everybody likes to have a partner.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly. So they went to the Heckman Biscuit Company, which was conveniently also in Michigan. They 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Out of the gate, Grand Rapids, by the way, just a little personal aside is where I learned that I actually love frog legs.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. There was this dinner theater in Grand Rapids that my family used to go to when I was growing up in Toledo, the 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.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know where it was, buddy, but I tried frog legs on a buffet in the 1970s or early 80s. Yeah. And I thought, hey, this tastes like chicken kind of.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's the weird skin that really throws it off though.

[Josh Clark]

These were fried, so I don't remember the skin. And this is a very distant memory. So. But I'm with you. I couldn't eat a frog.

[Chuck Bryant]

Now, these were not fried. These were like braised.

[Josh Clark]

No, mine were fried.

[Chuck Bryant]

So back to thanks for indulging me in that. 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. And he's like, I'll do this, I'll take this project on. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And it wasn't an official thing. I think it was a handshake agreement at first. But they started 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?

[Chuck Bryant]

It is Quite a, yeah. Almost suspicious.

[Josh Clark]

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 em in the toaster, dad. And 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, that's why there's little holes in pop Tarts still today.

[Josh Clark]

That's right, because they will explode.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's true.

[Josh Clark]

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. And then, oh baby, the fourth one, the all time great brown sugar cinnamon.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep, that's the best one, hands down.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, you too, huh?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yes.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, great. What a relief.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

So what is that garbage Jerry said before we recorded?

[Chuck Bryant]

She talked about her grandmother.

[Josh Clark]

Not that part.

[Chuck Bryant]

Making a blueberry, I believe blueberry pop tarts that are unfrosted and buttering them.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, well, I was gonna hang on to that for my final tip, but I might as well launch into it now. That 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, in maybe our breakfast episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

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 the problem. It's buttery, it's delicious. I highly recommend it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, if you mentioned that before, then there's a hundred percent chance that I followed up with this. That I have. I heard of that from Jessica Simpson.

[Josh Clark]

Oh.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who mentioned, I guess when she was pregnant, she was craving buttered pop tarts and I hadn't heard of it until then.

[Josh Clark]

It's the finishing touch. It's the cherry on top. It really finishes it off nicely.

[Chuck Bryant]

So you do that with the brown sugar cinnamon version.

[Josh Clark]

Dude, every version. But that's the only version I'll eat. And I gotta say, I don't eat pop tarts anymore. Like, I can't remember the last pop Tart I had. But 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right? 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. Cause 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.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, I'll have to. I mean, this is. I'm going to buy some Pop Tarts just to try some of these again.

[Chuck Bryant]

Cherry.

[Josh Clark]

All right, I'll try cherry. They're frosted, I take it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. I mean, I don't even know why they make them unfrosted. That's crazy.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and your grandma canned them.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But does the cherry have sprinkles? 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Cherry has everything you want. Not only does it have sprinkles, Chuck, it has like, sugar crystals. Yes. Dude, you're going to love cherry, believe me. I expect a text later on with you thanking me.

[Josh Clark]

All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

For recommending cherry Pop Tarts.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Ruby's never had a Pop Tart, so we're gonna pull.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's a good one to start on.

[Josh Clark]

All right. So. Well, I guess we should probably take a break.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we just. We kind of got off course here.

[Josh Clark]

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. Support for the show Today comes from public.com. you're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side. The point is you're engaged with your investments and Public gets that.

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

Bargain detergent jug is 80% water, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

It doesn't clean as well.

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

I thought I was getting a better.

[Josh Clark]

Deal because it's so big.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you want a better clean, Tide.

[Josh Clark]

Pods are only 12% water. The rest is pure, concentrated cleaning ingredients.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, let me make an announcement.

[Josh Clark]

Attention, shoppers, if you want a real deal, try Tide pods. Stop paying for watered down detergents.

[Chuck Bryant]

Pay for clean. If it's got to be clean, it's.

[Josh Clark]

Got to be Tide pods.

[Chuck Bryant]

Water content based on the leading bargain liquid detergent.

[Josh Clark]

Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff you should know. Okay, Chuck, so those original fruit scones, the, the prototype, the, er, Pop Tart, I guess you 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, you, you, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like you would have like a grilled cheese sandwich kind of cut like that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And none of these first ones were frosted either, we should point out.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. Fools. 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I was a little disappointed to know it was a cost cutting measure because I was just like, I thought someone, you know, Mr. Post, decreed from on high they shall be eaten two at a time.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, 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, but. 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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Like the edges are way more like a pie crust.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it looks kind of crimped or whatever. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I think after this, this all happened. Like you said, poor Dan Post was taking bite after bite and saying, like, these are disgusting. But within four months of Kellogg's approaching Henckels, they had like a ready for market Pop Tart developed.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Or Fruitscone. They changed the name, I think, pretty quickly to Pop Tarts, which I never knew. This, this was a play on pop art, which was a big thing at the time with Andy Warhol and his factory. And I had no idea that it was just sort of a little clever nod to that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I didn't either. I didn't realize Pop Tarts were quite so cool.

[Josh Clark]

Agreed.

[Chuck Bryant]

So the trademark for the brand was filed on June 20, 1964. They started shipping out the first cases on September 14. And they chose Cleveland as their test market. And Cleveland went bonkers for these things. I saw in the first two weeks, they sold 10 million boxes of Pop Tarts.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, my God.

[Chuck Bryant]

By December 30th. So just a couple months by 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 gonna be this into it. Were 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 we're selling them like. Like hotcakes, but more like hotcake flavored Pop Tarts.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. 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 they rebrand. Everyone's getting us confused with rural landowners.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So they rebranded them to Tostem 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Even Toastems.

[Josh Clark]

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. Nabisco had one called Tostettes that they finally stopped selling in 2002. Pillsbury. I will say the toaster strudel, when it came out in 1985, was a pretty big hot item. I remember.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Because it was a unfrosted pop tart. Much more pastry, like flaky pastry than a Pop Tart is. But the key was, the gimmick was that came with frosting separated. So you put frosting on it and.

[Josh Clark]

I was able to squeeze it into your mouth at the end.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly, yes. And I was crazy for these things. And I guess I got a bad batch or something once and I got sick off of it. And now just seeing those two words together makes my stomach turn.

[Josh Clark]

No way.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, I would. I couldn't eat. I couldn't be in the same room as a toaster strudel again.

[Josh Clark]

That was like me with beef jerky for a solid 10 years.

[Chuck Bryant]

You poor bastard.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. 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% 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.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that in 2022, they sold 3.

[Josh Clark]

Billion pop tarts boxes, or individual tarts.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 1 billion pop tarts, which is still impressive. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, once you get into those kind of numbers, you're kind of splitting hairs, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's true, man. Thanks for saying that. Cause I was feeling pretty down about myself for a second.

[Josh Clark]

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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Which is kind of sad because Danishes are great.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. The cheese Danish.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. I think that'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.

[Josh Clark]

Which is a pizza bad idea.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was a pizza version of Pop Tarts and they put it in the same box and everything. 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. 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 whatever in that form to make it. Like, you know, we make these when we go camping with pie. Irons. You ever heard of pie irons?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, you have?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Like a hand pie iron, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, you 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, but a Pop Tart's just not thick enough.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, plus, also now, today, if you came out with that, everybody'd say, this isn't like a Hot Pocket, so what's the point?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, good point.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, But I'll bet it burned your tongue like a Hot Pocket if you ate it too soon. Or a Geno's Pizza Roll. Is there anything that can burn a tongue worse than a Geno's Pizza Roll? Cause you just. You eat them too soon. You can't wait around for them to cool off enough.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's a garbage food that I wasn't allowed to have much, and we don't have at our house. But at. At Ruby's pool party this year, I just needed something easy to put in the oven to make for a bunch of kids, and I got freaking pizza rolls.

[Chuck Bryant]

What'd you think?

[Josh Clark]

They're not great, but the kids loved them.

[Chuck Bryant]

I haven't had one in a while. I'll have to go back and revisit it, or else maybe I'll just not.

[Josh Clark]

You have a more sophisticated palette now. I would just lean on nostalgia and. What a great memory you have.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. Thank you for that.

[Josh Clark]

I don't think we need to go all 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

No. And don't forget Pop Tart cereal. That kind of made a splash for a minute.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't try that. I hadn't heard of that. Did you have that?

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It was just like seven years ago.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly.

[Josh Clark]

When you were a child.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. They finally just put it all in to mostly just making Pop Tarts and new, interesting flavors.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well, it helped that no one called us after a while, right when the opportunities dried up, you know, I.

[Chuck Bryant]

Took it as, you know, we just want to hear you podcast.

[Josh Clark]

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, because 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we'll get to that in a second.

[Josh Clark]

What? Right out of the foil?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Do you do that?

[Josh Clark]

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 granola bars and stuff. Now there's so much of that. But back then, I would just threw some Pop Tarts in the backpack and I would eat them out of the package. But it's not great.

[Chuck Bryant]

It can be done, but no, it's not great.

[Josh Clark]

Which what I do then is I. I tear off the edges. So I just have the frosted center.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. And you leave the edges to nature.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

To the wolves tracking you.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

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?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But they ditched Milton the Toaster pretty quickly when they debuted them in 1971. But they continued on, like you said, advertising. Like, anytime you watch Saturday morning cartoons, they were on after school cartoons. They were on. Like, if you were a kid watching tv, you probably saw a Pop Tart commercial.

[Josh Clark]

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. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

I don't remember that one.

[Chuck Bryant]

There was also. Well, I made that up too when I was eating Pop tart cereal in 2018. There was also a campaign called so Hot They're Cool and another one called Snacula. So if you're a Millennial or Gen Xer, like that pretty much covers you. And then it seems like Gen Z was getting the crazy good campaign, which is still. But it's like these crudely drawn Pop Tarts and they like kill each other to eat one another kind of thing. It's just weird and bizarre and off the wall interesting.

[Josh Clark]

Well, they took over the Citrus bowl, the college football game played in Orlando a couple 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 these interesting tie ins where they have three different mascots and the MVP of the game picks the mascot. So, you know, they're tied in stuff like that. They say it's kind of fun. I think they, 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. A 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. Just a giant feel.

[Josh Clark]

Like that's a really good price.

[Chuck Bryant]

I thought so too. It seems like a real value.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, I saw this picture of this thing on a kitchen table and that's cheaper than a decent birthday cake.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, let's say you have eight. Eight pack of Pop Tarts.

[Josh Clark]

Well, they're sold in sixes though, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

I think they're sold 6, 8, 14amillion. 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. No. 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 size shapes and then pack them away in the freezer, you can't do that anymore.

[Josh Clark]

Ooh, I bet that centerpiece is so good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'll bet it is too.

[Josh Clark]

Have we taken a second break?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't think so, man. I think we should now.

[Josh Clark]

All right, we'll take a second break and talk about everybody's favorite topic, health and safety, right after this. Support for the show today comes from public.com you're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side. The point is you're engaged with your investments and Public gets that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can put together a multi asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there. Plus an industry leading 3.6% APY high yield cash account.

[Josh Clark]

Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.comsysk and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.comsysk paid for by Public Investing. All investing involves risk of loss including loss of principal. Brokerage services for U.S. listed registered securities, options and bonds and a self directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Crypto trading provided by Zerohash Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures.

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[Chuck Bryant]

What's that sound? That's the sound of Downy Unstoppable scent.

[Josh Clark]

Beads going into your washing machine and giving your clothes freshness that lasts all day long. There it is again. It's like music to your ears. Or more like music to your nose. That freshness is irresistible. Let's get a Downy Unstoppables bottle shake. And now a sniff solo.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nice.

[Josh Clark]

With Downy Unstoppable, you just toss wash. Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

For all day freshness.

[Josh Clark]

Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff you should know.

[Josh Clark]

All right, so we kind of made a joke earlier about the frosting sliding off and burning your kitchen down. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

I 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.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 if the toaster cycle never ends, the pop tart's in big trouble. They got 18 inch high flames in 4 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. And 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I think those. 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 filling packed in that pastry just retains a lot of heat.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

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 US Customer Product Safety Commission had 17 reports of pop Tart fires. And eventually, of course, there would be a lawsuit. In 1995, Pop Tarts 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 Tart said 2,400, and they said, Deal.

[Chuck Bryant]

Deal.

[Josh Clark]

2,400 bucks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. I guess. And then the attorney took like, 2,000 of that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, probably.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 2 of, say, frosted strawberry pop tarts, 370 calories, 31 grams of sugar, 8 grams of fat. But here's the healthy part. 1 gram of fiber and 4 grams of protein. Which can only be explained as accidental.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. A byproduct. I wonder if on the nutritional thing, it also accounts for added butter.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. With butter, a million calories.

[Josh Clark]

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. You 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 strawberry 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. So they're not healthy. No, Which. 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? I 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 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 sections are like basically one paragraph. They're totally convoluted. The sections will repeat themselves. They'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?

[Josh Clark]

Emily bought a AI book by accident off Amazon. It was a pottery book. And she got it and she was like, wait a minute. She's like, this isn't a real person. And she tried to look up. The author didn't exist.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Obviously returned it and was, you know, not too happy, but.

[Chuck Bryant]

And the AI was like, man, I thought that was a sale.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

In other words, everyone knows what a Pop Tart is. Dummy. Go home.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly.

[Josh Clark]

You don't eat it because it's healthy.

[Chuck Bryant]

I had forgotten that you hadn't wrapped that story up. Quite a boondoggle in the middle there.

[Josh Clark]

So because of the food dyes and things like that, you're not going to get 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 six and blue one dyes. They instead use paprika, beetroot, and extract from the annatto tree to color their Pop Tarts.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Which is an orange reddy color I've read.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I wonder how that affects the flavor of paprika.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. Use beetroot. Jerk.

[Josh Clark]

Agree. Should we go through a couple of these cultural touchstones?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, he did. And conceive of it, too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was a bad.

[Chuck Bryant]

So bad.

[Josh Clark]

It was a bad movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was so boring.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't watch it. I watched a little bit of it and realized that it was flaming garbage.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly the same for me. I think I made it 10 minutes in.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

No. Yeah. But that's kind of the. Like, I had one in a fancy restaurant one once. They had it on the dessert. They called it their Pop Tart. And it was. It was astounding. But it wasn't a Pop Tart exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

It has to have a certain.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, trashy quality.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly. It does. And it's missing that when you make it at home.

[Josh Clark]

In 2021, when we were bombing Afghanistan, we started dropping food, including Pop Tarts, that the military, the US 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. Let's not drop garbage food as an icebreaker.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 disability and not have to work.

[Josh Clark]

I Remember that one?

[Chuck Bryant]

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. I bet that's so good.

[Josh Clark]

Like a PB&J between two pop tarts.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, I could see that. Well, there's PB and J Pop Tarts, or there used to be. And those were pretty good.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, they've had lots of wacky flavors, and I looked up a bunch of those. Any of them stand out?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, God, I don't have it in front of me. 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. It doesn't sound very good. No, there's like a CO branded orange crush one A&W root beer. There 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.

[Josh Clark]

What was the filling?

[Chuck Bryant]

It was like a. A chemically sugar cookie pasty dough.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. They're just time tested and they're so, so good. Like cherry or blueberry or strawberry or of course, brown sugar. Cinnamon.

[Josh Clark]

Agreed. It just hit me. They should partner up with Biscoff because they make that Biscoff butter. I bet that would be pretty good.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm really surprised they haven't.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ostensibly good memories.

[Josh Clark]

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. And 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Themselves. They're keeping them for themselves.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

That's a lot.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 Mr. E pop tart?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they came up Mr. T. Close. Replace the T with an 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 gets garlic and onion. It turned out it was an Everything Bagel Pop Tart. And everyone said, we hate that. Get it off of our shelves.

[Josh Clark]

Ah, I do love Everything bagel. Almost everything. But I could see where that might not, because I even like that Ginny's Everything Bagel ice cream I thought was so good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I didn't try that.

[Josh Clark]

A lot of people hated it. I loved it.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, as far as the Jenny's go.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So good.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, agreed.

[Chuck Bryant]

You got anything else?

[Josh Clark]

No, I think I gained a few pounds just doing this episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I can't decide if I'm going to run out and buy some more or just, you know, leave it be.

[Josh Clark]

I'm going to buy some.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, let me know. I'll live vicariously through you.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, you know what I'll do, bud? I'll get. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, well, while you're doing that, Chuck, how about some listener mail action?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, this is about another MTV follow up about the show, 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. We had a little brother be our videographer and had bowls of cereal fall on her 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 Ohio. Go Buckeyes. Michelle.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nice Michelle. Thank you for that one. That was a sohio story if I've ever heard one.

[Josh Clark]

Agreed.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom with a Pop Tart and send it off to stuffpodcasteartradio.com.

[Josh Clark]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Support for the show today comes from public.com you're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side. The point is you're engaged with your investments. Public gets that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can put together a multi asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto. It's all there plus an industry leading 3.6% APY high yield cash account.

[Josh Clark]

Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.comsysk and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.comsysk paid for by Public Investing. All investing involves risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for U.S. listed registered securities options and bonds in a self directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Crypto trading provided by Zerohash Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures.

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[Chuck Bryant]

I keep telling them not to say that.

[Josh Clark]

I'm no superhuman. Believe it or not, I struggle with moderate obstructive sleep apnea, or osa, in adults with obesity. Moderate to severe OSA is a condition where breathing is interrupted during sleep, with loud snoring, choking, gasping for air, and even daytime fatigue. Let's just say it can sound a lot like this. Sound familiar? Learn more@don'tsleeponosa.com this information is provided by.

[Chuck Bryant]

Lilly, A medicine company.

[Josh Clark]

This is an I Heart podcast.