February 14, 2024 – Pop-Tarts

Bill Post, the man who invented Pop-Tarts, has died at the age of 95. In the early 60s, Kellogg’s and Post had an intense rivalry to release a breakfast toaster pastry. Post had invented a process for dehydrating food and wrapping it in foil to keep it fresh. They announced a new product they called “Country Squares” in 1964. However, they were months away from releasing it. So Kellogg’s rushed to develop their own version. They hired Bill Post, a former employee at Keebler for the job. Kellogg executives gave him their idea and after assembling a team to make it happen, they created a product in just 4 months.
They were originally called Fruit Scones, but the name was soon changed to Pop-Tarts as a pun on the Pop Art movement that was popular at the time. They first tested the new product in the Cleveland market, and it was an instant success. Kellogg’s increased their first national shipments from 10,000 cases to 45,000, and Pop-Tarts went on sale nationwide in 1964. There were 4 original flavors – strawberry, blueberry, brown sugar cinnamon, and apple currant (soon renamed to apple -berry). Pop-Tarts were so popular that Kellogg had trouble keeping up with demand. The first shipment sold out in 2 weeks, prompting the company to run advertisements apologizing for the empty shelves. This only increased demand for the product.
Today, there are between 20 and 30 flavors of Pop-Tarts in production at any given time. However, there is a much more limited number of flavors outside the U.S., due to local laws prohibiting the use of specific food dyes or high fructose corn syrup.
Pop-Tarts have been the subject of several lawsuits. In 1992, Kellogg’s was sued after a Pop-Tart got stuck in a toaster and caught fire. A professor at Texas A&M University did an experiment in 1994 that showed strawberry Pop-Tarts could produce flames up to 1.5 feet high if left in a toaster too long. This prompted several more lawsuits, and Pop-Tarts now come with a warning not to leave your toaster or microwave unattended.
60 years after their introduction, Pop-Tarts remains a favorite, with 3 billion sold in 2022. In June of 2021, Jerry Seinfeld announced that he was producing and starring in a movie about the creation of the Pop-Tart. It’s called Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story, and will be released on Netflix in May of this year. Learn more here.