That's the top-rated comment on "Confessions of a Pop-Tarts Taste Tester/When my family was enlisted nearly 60 years ago, little did we suspect that the pastry would become a pop-culture phenomenon and inspire a Seinfeld movie" (NYT)("Kellogg’s considered calling them 'fruit scones' — was changed to reflect the sensibilities of the ’60s, when Pop Art was ascendant").
This got us talking about "pocket porridge" — a product a family member had encountered on a recent trip to Germany. And I reminisced about when granola bars were new... and then when "granola" itself was a new word.
I guessed that happened around 1970, and, searching for "granola" in the NYT archive, I found the oldest article — published in 1970 — "A Long‐Haired Safari Across Middle America."
Two young men — evincing the "style associated with the word 'hippie'" — drive a VW bus across America and find out that people are really nice to them — not like "Easy Rider" at all.
And here's the first "granola": "[Middle Americans] took great interest in our low‐budget dinners of brown rice, vegetables and the health cereal called Crunchy Granola..."
As for Seinfeld, the article says he's making a movie called “Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story.” It sounds like "Barbie" — another movie that ropes people in based on their interest in a commercial brand.
Which this post also does, though it only absorbs one minute of your time.
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77 comments:
I've never tasted a Pop Tart, and it's unlikely I ever will. I may be be the only Baby Boomer who never has.
And that's ... OK, Boomer.
Far out!
I would prefer to see a Pot Tarts movie to a Barbie movie any day. :)
I ate a lot of pop tarts in my youth. Am I the only one who nibbled around the nothing but crust edge and then savored the rest that had filling in every bite?
I grew up eating Pop Tarts for breakfast, too. Cherry was my favorite until chocolate came out. It’s only now in my old age that I wonder why my mother fed me those while simultaneously complaining I was fat.
We got yellow Triaminic. We weren't allowed to eat cereal, and I don't think I tasted a Pop-Tart until I was an adult. I would've killed to be a Jetsons family.
Pop Tarts is a better name for them than Fruit Scones. They are closer to a toaster pie or tart than a scone. They are nothing like a scone.
I begged for Pop Tarts as a kid. One time they entered our house and my dad banned all future purchases.
Were these really a nice enough phenomenon to warrant a Seinfeld movie? Tang or Eggos seem a higher priority…
…also- the cinnamon ones with the brown frosting.
In a pinch…
Thinking back, and consistent with my age and the tenor of the times, I always associated the Pop-Tart fruit center with napalm.
And Chef Boyardee ravioli filling with pocket lint.
Natural Ovens of Manitowoc, Wisconsin made the best granola. Sadly no longer available. Birkebeiner fuel.
"Natural Ovens Bakery was founded in 1976 by Paul A. Stitt, who was disgruntled by the lack of quality whole grain bread available to his health food store. Without operating capital but with a good helping of determination and zeal, he purchased a local bakery and developed his own brand.
Paul became a nutrition leader and dedicated his life to creating a brand rich in essential vitamins and minerals, which he saw as vital to the human body, but without chemical additives or preservatives. Local customers could count on Natural Ovens to be years ahead of nutrition trends."
Books by Paul State
Fighting the Food Giants
Beating the Food Giants
Vitamin D: Is It The Fountain of Youth?
The Real Cause of Heart Disease Is Not Cholesterol
Why Calories Don't Count
Speaking of food fads, I was a wheat germ addict once upon a time.
The Free Press has a David Sedaris piece (via RCP) that goes nicely with this post.
On Saturdays, my parents used to "let" us eat breakfast without them (that is, they got to sleep in while we watched Carolina). We alternated between Pop-Tarts and these things no one seems to remember but me, Carnation (?) Breakfast Squares. I know these latter things existed as I've found them on food kitsch sites, but I seem to be the only person who ever ate them, including my sister and brother.
I LOOOVED them. They were chalky, tasted of modern alchemy, and made me feel as if I had a bag of cement in my stomach, and if I could find them today, I would attempt to scarf down the whole box even though I could never eat more than the two that came in an individually wrapped package as a child.
"Unfrosted?". They only make unfrosted strawberry Pop Tarts now. I used to love the unrelated blueberry type.
"We thought we were the Jetsons."
I can't tell you everything I did to get there. I'm still more comfortable with a futuristic metal-and-fluorescent light environment than the usual comfy colonial stuff at home. When I trace it all back to Werner von Braun I cringe.
My farmer dad maintained the old school tradition of taking a mid-morning and mid-afternoon break from chores and field work. Pop-Tarts appeared as a birthday treat for us kids during one of those breaks.
Oh, for the love of... I literally just commented one minute ago on another thread that I was going to proofread better, and I typo'ed my comment above. Of course we were watching CARTOONS, not Carolinas.
Kids today have no idea what it was like to watch the Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Show. I once saw a screening of Bugs Bunny cartoons in a theater - fascinating! I hadn't realized that they were made to be shown on the big screen (or at least they definitely played well that way). Often when breaking the fourth wall, Bugs or Daffy would look down, not out, at the audience. (I suppose it worked great when we were all children lying on the floor in front of our 15-inch tvs too!) Very effective.
Not to mention the short-lived Egg Baskets of the 1980s. I loved their TV ads, the farmer with the fake Irish accent.
If you had a Carnation Instant Breakfast I can't imagine having room for a pop tart. Those were convincing! I liked the egg nog ones. Egg
Never had Pop Tarts as a kid, Mom didn't believe in "convenience foods". Spent a weekend with my neighbor friend at his Dad's house. His smoking hot Milf of a trophy wife served us Carnation Instant Breakfast blended with vanilla ice cream. For supper, it was Swanson's TV dinners that we ate on TV trays watching TV.
I'd thought I'd died and gone to heaven.
For the sake of completeness, General Mills makes a clone product they call Toaster Strudel. They sell a lot of it.
Cinnamon Pop Tarts were my favorite back then. But they were a treat, not a staple.
I wish Guerrilla Cookies would come back. They were a Madison staple in college. I can still picture and taste them.
My son is a bit obsessive and eats the same thing for breakfast every day, until he moves on to something else. For the past year or so, it's been a Pop-Tart, but now he seems to be switching to frozen waffles.
If you don't have any pop-tarts lying around, you can cut a random piece of cardboard into the a 3"x4" rectangle. Toast lightly, and frost with your favorite frosting. mmm mmmm mmmmmm.
If they stuck with “fruit scones” they could have an advertising campaign based on “Everybody must get Scones.”
Happy Thanksgiving.
Eat ‘em now
Eat ‘em later
‘Cause you don’t have to keep them in…
A refrigerator.
POP TARTS.
A hidden tell right there
Practice tip: Pop Tarts pop up with their filling too hot to eat. Let them cool a few minutes.
@lgv-That was my preferred way of eating them, too.
The Seinfeld joke is (and I paraphrase):
Pop Tarts: they can't go stale, because they were never fresh.
My first pop-tart was a nadir of childhood, ranking down on the list of early experiences with hollow chocolate bunnies. I doubt I've eaten more than three of them. Quaestor has always been contrary and gave early signs of his personality defects, such as disliking pop-tarts, happily eating Braunschweiger sandwiches, eating the black jellybeans first, and preferring shredded wheat to any pre-sweetened cereal.
The intense TV adverts on Saturday mornings ginned up quite the anticipatory tsunami in my overheated brain. Like MacBeth's ethereal dirk, the ideal pop-tart seemed to hover before me -- pie for breakfast! The first of them my mother brought home was a box of the cherry-flavored variety, which was really exciting, with home-baked cherry pie being a favorite treat. I insisted we try some immediately, so into the toaster went two. The smell of those things as they warmed was the olfactory antipode of anything resembling a cherry pie. Not encouraging.
Gawd! What a letdown. A smear of indeterminate sweetish goo sandwiched with sugar-frosted cardboard. I gave the half-eaten pastry plank to the dog. Later, we tried the strawberry flavor, which was worse.
Pop Tarts were the first food items I remember being packaged in a foil pouch.
Did have the occasional Instant Breakfast growing up. But the time when we hit it hard was on Boy Scout camping trips. We originally mixed it in squeeze tubes with instant milk. But then we found that powdered creamer tasted better. Lunch and dinner tended to be freeze dried food.
That was when we were backpacking. But if we were essentially car camping, we had another, tastier, alternative. One of our neighbors, living a couple doors down, was Food and Beverage Director at Marian Marietta, SW of Denver. Normally he fed their 17,000 employees, which gave him access to a very large industrial kitchen. So, he would make up stew or chili in a huge steel pot, freeze it, and then cooking at the camp site meant just thawing it on the fire at the camp site. But the reason that I brought this up was that one of his sons recently brought this up in a discussion we had recently. Martin apparently got involved in developing astronaut food, and his father was in charge of the project.
My dad went to Cornell to get his degree in restaurant management and eventually ended up managing the food service for Martin Marietta, which included designing the menu for the Astronauts. This included testing the food on [me]. So, on the 1960s we got to test astronaut food. Boy do I remember that... including microwave ovens, oatmeal and hot dogs.
For example, the cooking of hot dogs by electric conduction. Or the cooking of oatmeal in a microwave. All this had to be sorted out.
Yes... space food sticks, made by pillsbury for NASA in the 60s, which the astronauts hated. You won't believe this but when the complaints became too loud, NASA turned to Martin Marietta, and Martin asked [my father] to help them improve the food. [He], of course, tested the new food on his family, including [me].
So, we had a microwave oven, long before you could buy them, then called a Radar Range from Amana and we tried all different types of food. My favorite was heating oatmeal in a bowl of milk...makes a large growing blob, then shrinks back to nothing...
There was also the need to dehydrate the food to reduce the weight. Since much of the food was mush in a bag that weighed a lot.
So, [I] got to taste 100s of different types of freeze dried food. Some of it was good, some awful. [His father] would prepare it and then sit there at dinner and make notes of what the family said.
At that time I never imagined that it was being tested on us.
Later missions began to mix food, some freeze dried, some not. NASA also realized this needed more research and formed a research team to improve the food.
My favorite was freeze dried shrimp. They were like popcorn when you took them out of the can ... weighed nothing. Then, when you rehydrated them ... poof, shrimp again.
Some things were awful, like beef, sort of like eating a sponge.
Later, when NASA had mixed menus, the had a problem with plastic melting in the microwave, so the invented heat-resistant nylon .... that you can buy today to cook your Turkey in.
Don't forget that the astronauts had to recycle their water... so they invented the molecular membrane to extract the water from it. No kidding.
[Another friend] So I understood a lot of the issue was designing foods that did not generate any crumbs, etc as they would gum up the works in the capsule.
Yep, crumbs, and one type of food bleeding into another when you rehydrate it.for example, a hamburger in s bun. Solution, separate the hamburger and bun, wrap separately.
Google "history of space food" where you'll find more about it.
Living a couple doors away, we got a bit of the experience, when we would drop by. First house I ever saw with a professional kitchen (and a shooting range under their corral). I think that his father was the one who turned us on to squeeze tubes (see above) and freeze dried meat.
Pop Tarts were a staple, just like cereal but more versatile and self-contained. Liked the fruity ones, and would nibble the edges first, too.
Tang came and went, unlamented. Will be known only from the old joke about the Apollo program--only Americans would go to the moon to play golf and drink Tang.
"Carnation (?) Breakfast Squares."
I remember those!
lgv,
That was the only way to eat them!
Pop tarts are nasty. I wonder if they always had as much sugar as they do now. It's an interesting question since hardly anyone in the 60's was fat.
>Wilbur said...
I've never tasted a Pop Tart, and it's unlikely I ever will. I may be be the only Baby Boomer who never has.<
You aren't. They always looked singularly unappetizing to me. Dried out things combined with some sort of flavored goo. Something like the sweet version of shit-on-a-shingle. And as a Midwestern, plain folks kid whose culinary acuity was decidedly underdeveloped, my gustatory expectations were not exactly high.
@Wince: You should find the “Generation Kill” episode where Lt. Colbert pulls a a can of Chef Boyardee out of his ruck as a treat.
We didn't start getting PopTarts until I was a teenager- I would often toast one and take on the bus with me to eat on the way to school in a paper towel. I preferred the Cherry or Strawberry exclusively. I haven't eaten one in several decades now, but I notice them in the grocery store all the time. I might buy a box and eat them just for sentimental reasons.
@Questor: a gob of Braunschweiger spread on 4 Ritz crackers was our lazy Saturday lunch. Washed down with a cold glass of whole milk. You would not believe the mucus response this kicked off.
I can still smell it, 40 years later. I'd love to try it again, but I suspect my wife would banish me from the house until I had my mouth cleaned professionally.
OTOH, Chef Boyardee and pizzas were never to be found in our pantry. I didn't even know what pizza was until I was a teen.
Remember the cool little lined cereal boxes that were their own bowls--just add milk? I never see them any more (not that I've looked).
I first thought Crunchy Granola was a boxer.
There's a lot of nostalgia about Guerilla Cookies, since the guy who baked them took the recipe to his grave. Many people have tried to duplicate them, without success, because the missing ingredient is our youth.
Its amazing what our mother did when she took a break for cooking and made us think it was a cool. Tang was the "Drink of the Astronauts". Pop tarts were like candy for breakfast. Tv dinners were served on TV trays, so we could watch our shows while eating dinner. Hi-C and jello were special treats.
Sloppy joes and Canned Chicken chow mein rounded out the special fare. I was also given balony sandwitches (sic) to eat at lunch. Its amazing I lived past 12.
Its amazing what our mother did when she took a break for cooking and made us think it was a cool. Tang was the "Drink of the Astronauts". Pop tarts were like candy for breakfast. Tv dinners were served on TV trays, so we could watch our shows while eating dinner. Hi-C and jello were special treats.
Sloppy joes and Canned Chicken chow mein rounded out the special fare. I was also given balony sandwitches (sic) to eat at lunch. Its amazing I lived past 12.
For moms who hate to cook, I'm thinking Turkey Pop Tarts with Gravy Frosting.
They're even better the next day. Just put the uneaten portion back in the toaster for a minute.
If you think about it, a turkey pot pie is basically just a big turkey and gravy Pop Tart that won't fit in a standard toaster.
Q: It sickens me we have more in common 🤪. Discovering chocolate bunnies to be hollow at a tender young age was one of the best teaching moments on tempering expectations. I can't look at Easter candy and not remember that moment.
We got them as treats occasionally. There was a maple frosted flavor in the early 80s that was off the hook.
Never liked pop tarts, but Carnation Instant Breakfast was a staple for me growing up.
Always been a pop tarts guy. Two years ago I gave up sugary stuff and carbs for breakfast (which was pop tarts, bagels, apple turnovers, that kind of thing) except for the occasional diner pancake breakfast. They say you don't miss stuff after awhile. They are wrong.
We were a cereal family, so no Pop Tarts. Only had them about 1-5 times in my life. I remember eating a grape and strawberry once each.
For cereal, we had primarily Cheerios, Wheatley’s, Grape Nuts, and Chex - usually the Corn ones. Once in a while we would get a box of a sugar cereal as a treat. I remember Super Sugar Crisp or Honeycomb. Those boxes disappeared fast.
When Kix came out, mom tried to get us to eat it, but we hated it. She finally had to throw the box away. Throwing food away was rare and a big deal.
On weekends we kids would often make pancakes or waffles from a mix. I remember we would occasionally get the instant mix - just add water. Those were easy. Usually we had the type where we had to add milk, eggs, etc.
I'm the only privileged one?
Sit down family breakfast. The entire family. Mom at the stove cooking. Fried eggs, meat of some sort. Bacon, sausage, headcheese, ham. Toast, tossed on the table 2 slices at a time. A one pound block of butter in the middle of the table, Jam or jelly put out on request. Oatmeal or cream of Wheat. Pancakes once a week maybe. (waffles were reserved for supper.)
Almost forget cereal. Shredded Wheat, Grape nuts, Cap'n Crunch, Frosted Flakes. But that was for the few times mom was sick. Though Dad know his way around a skillet. (He and his mom had to teach the new bride how to cook. She had never fried an egg.)
Unfrosted cinnamon are still the best.
But still a far second to Cap'n Crunch in the pantheon of junk breakfast food. Plus, what other cereal has been immortalized, nay, rhapsodized by novelist Neal Stephenson? (In Cryptonomicon, a great read, his best IMO.)
Anyone remember Metrecal?
What poo!
I loved the Pop Tarts when I was a kid, although the Danish Go-Rounds from Kellogg's were better, in my opinion.
Carnation Instant Breakfast saw me through years 12-16; not sure why my mom tolerated it because she was an excellent cook, however, I was a very picky eater. Pop-Tarts were staples in the Scouts' backpack trips we took as teenagers but we never had them at home. I once took a box of Pop-Tarts to a friend living in France because he couldn't get them there and was feeling slightly nostalgic for them.
Iowan2, nope, my mom cooked a regular rotation of eggs, sausage, pancakes, etc during the school year but on Saturdays we made our own bowls of cereal. Sunday breakfast before church was some sort of pastries as we got ready.
Bruce Hayden writes, "For example, the cooking of hot dogs by electric conduction."
Aren't electric hot dogs cooked by means of resistance?
"Kellogg’s considered calling them 'fruit scones' — was changed to reflect the sensibilities of the ’60s, when Pop Art was ascendant"
Trader Joe's sells house-brand toaster pastries from a health food company (if you go to a "natural grocery" you can find them for twice the price, but in more varieties). I call them "Op Tarts".
I almost never eat them.
But they are better untoasted.
That is a hill I will die on.
Plus, what other cereal has been immortalized, nay, rhapsodized by novelist Neal Stephenson? (In Cryptonomicon, a great read, his best IMO.)
And Eddie Rabbitt. "Pure love, baby it's pure love
Milk and honey and Cap'n Crunch and you in the morning" (Sung by Ronnie Milsap.)
My mom was not a morning person. Soon as it was feasible, my sister and I were eating breakfast cereals because we could prepare them ourselves. For me it was either Cocoa Krispies or Cocoa Puffs. I would eat while reading the back of the box for what seemed to be the hundredth time. A little bit older I switched to Carnation Instant Breakfast, Chocolate or Chocolate Malt, I cannot remember which. I went to my paternal aunt's for a week one summer and I made sure I told her about CIB. I just forgot to tell her which flavor I wanted. Since she knew my favorite ice cream was vanilla, she bought Vanilla CIB. I expressed my disappointment but theirs was a family that went shopping once a week and food was not to be wasted. I drank one every morning.
Tried Pop Tarts once. Never again.
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
Quaestor said...
"Aren't electric hot dogs cooked by means of resistance?"
I just imagined an anthropomorphic hot dog, it's head bowed, a tiny little fist thrust into the air in defiance as it slowly heats up.
The Crack Emcee:
I'm still more comfortable with a futuristic metal-and-fluorescent light environment than the usual comfy colonial stuff at home. When I trace it all back to Werner von Braun I cringe.
It goes back another half century before any influence from WWII rocket designs. Art Deco.
@Quaestor:
I always and still do prefer Grape Nuts.
Braunschweiger is the one and only way I'll eat liver.
Braunschweiger is the one and only way I'll eat liver.
Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts are the best. Second place goes to Frosted Blueberry.
Here's a video about Kellogg's Danish Go-Rounds:
When Kellogg's Tried to Make Pop-Tarts for Adults
Braunschweiger is wonderful, but give me crispy fried slice of scrapple with my morning eggs and I'm in heaven. Braunschweiger is the Euro chic version of liverwurst, and scrapple is what gets made from the scraps left over from making Braunschweiger.
I did not know growing up that my mother fed me Eastern European, Depression Era poor folks food. I just knew it tasted great.
Revolutionary hotheads, make way for the hotdogs!
Had plenty of pop-tarts as a kid, but I always preferred Danish Go Rounds.
In SE Asia, K Pop Tarts are considered quite delicious.
Good Irish oatmeal cooked in chicken broth with a fist of nutritional yeast, fish sauce and hot sauce. Sometimes two seven minutes eggs on top.
I don't know why. I don't care. My husband leaves me to it.
Frosted Strawberry for me. The Spousal Unit prefers the Frosted cinnamon. Meh.
Hardly ever eat 'em anymore, they've begun to taste far too sweet for me. And yet, I have a box or two sitting in the pantry. . . . .
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