If when you are abroad you always peek at the supermarket shelves in search of new snacks banned from Italy, or if more simply you have seen the Jerry Seinfeld film distributed by Netflix with the title “Unfrosted: the story of an American snack”, probably know i Pop Tartthe famous snack of Kellogg’s on the market since 1964.
It’s about biscuits filled with jam – available in a thousand different flavors, from strawberry, to chocolate, to cinnamon roll, with sugared almonds or even cookie flavor – designed to be heated in the toaster and eaten for breakfast or as a snack.
But why are we talking about Pop Tart? Because the story of his creation is not as linear as one might imagine, enough to inspire Seinfeld to make a film featuring actors such as Hugh Grant, Amy Schumer, Melissa McCarthy and Jim Gaffigan. And although on the big screen this whole story is brought to exasperation (it is a film designed to be watched with your children), there is something true and interesting in what is shown.
The first and most important point is the rivalry between Kellogg’s and the other protagonist of the film, Post Cereals (or Post Consumer Brands), a cereal company founded in 1895 and today owner of various brands including Oreo O’s cereals, without which, perhaps, Pop-Tarts would never have arrived.
Although the two companies were not located across the street from each other as seen in the film (Kellogg’s is in Battle Creek, Michigan, while Post is in Tarrytown, New York), the distance did not deter them from copying one another’s ideas of the other.
The idea is simple, but innovative for the time: shortcrust pastry filled with jam, to which is added the possibility of heating it in the microwave, therefore without using the oven. The first to invent it was Stan Reesman, a product development employee at Post, creator of Country Squares. Charles CW Cooke, CEO of Post, was so enthusiastic about his new snack that he wanted to make the announcement public with a press release months before their arrival on the market. However, he did not consider the advantage that news of that kind could give to Kellogg’s, which now had six months to create a similar invention and compete on the market.
While Reesman was still trying to figure out the logistics of mass producing Country Squares, Kellogg’s already stocked American supermarket shelves. There was only one difference between the two snacks: the shape. While the former, as the name suggests, were square in shape, the Pop-Tarts were rectangular, “because no child wants to be square” explains Seinfeld in his film.
It matters little how; whether for the name, the size or the fame of the brand, the Pop-Tarts immediately conquered the public, beating the Country Squares on the market in 1964 and quickly selling out. In addition, the new snack teaches its consumers a new function of the toaster. If, in fact, it was previously used only to toast bread, thanks to Pop-Tarts Americans are finding a new use: heating pre-cooked snacks.
Officially the inventor of the Pop-Tarts is Bill Post (no relation to the company), hired with the sole aim of copying Reesman’s idea. According to some stories, during breeding experiments, one of the earlier versions risked exploding inside the toaster due to the expansion of the water inside the filling. A detail that in the film is taken to the extreme, even causing a victim. To stem the problem, they came create small holes which released steam during cooking. Bill Post was also the inventor of Rice Krispies Treats, or puffed rice and marshmallow bars, commonly made at home but which Kellogg’s began marketing in 1995.
But the story does not end here. According to what is told in the film, where the villain is played by Post (despite the fact that they were the real inventors), the name Pop-Tart was born by mistake. On the news the name is read backwards, thus forcing the company to endorse that version, given the amount of viewers who had already heard the announcement. In reality, in real life, Kellogg’s consciously decided to give this snack this name, taking inspiration from the pop art movement mainly represented in the United States by Andy Warhol.
Other curiosities from the film. During the numerous brain storming sessions to create the Pop-Tarts, Harold von Braunhut, inventor of the “sea monkeys”, tiny brine shrimp eggs that “came to life” when water was added, was called. His fame, however, goes beyond his inventions. Despite being Jewish, von Braunhut had close ties to white supremacist groups, bought weapons for a faction of the Ku Klux Klan and participated in the annual conference of the Aryan Nations, a North American anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi group. The reference to Nazi Germany associated with her name in the film is therefore true, as is the fact that it was Marjorie Post – daughter of the owner of Post Cereals – who built the Mar-a-Lago villa in Palm in 1980 Beach, Florida, purchased five years later by Donald Trump.
Read also:
-Anthony Bourdain, the new documentary Roadrunner three years after his deathThe dramatic miniseries The Virtues
-Asia Argento talked about Anthony Bourdain, and their latest messages, on Domenica In
-Recipes from cult films: from the Godfather’s spaghetti to the Big Kahuna Burger from Pulp Fiction
– Do you love cooking? Here are the 25 “cult films” about food to watch on the sofa
