TOASTER PASTRY SHOWDOWN! – Dandy Fun House episode 39

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The humble toaster pastry. It’s been our molten, tongue burning sweet little friend since the 60s. It’s a quick little pick me up when we need a tasty treat. Sometimes it’s breakfast on the run and in all the world, one little toaster named Milton reigns supreme with his empire of handheld, sugary rectangles known as Pop-Tarts. In this episode of the Dandy Fun House, we’re going to give three off-brand toaster pastry underdogs a chance to dethrone the mighty Milton and claim the title TOASTER PASTRY CHAMPION OF THE WORLD! For this is the Strawberry Toaster Pastry Showdown! Let’s step into the Fun House!

Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House Video Show, Podcast and Blog! This is where we cook up the very tastiest in retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff. I’m your host, Neil Dandy, and by pop-tartular demand, this episode is going to cook!

And yes, I’m coming to you straight from the Dandy Fun House Studios Kitchens, where today we’re going to have the showdown of the century! I have here before me the four most popular toaster pastries in America… Alright, they’re the only four different types of toaster pastries I could find after visiting four different grocery stores, but you get the idea, right? OK, here we go!

Upon conducting my search, scouring grocery store shelves for toaster pastries to pit against one another, I discovered that strawberry is apparently the most common flavor amongst all toaster pastries. So that’s the flavor we’re going to test today.

Here we have Millville Toaster Tarts, which is the Aldi brand. We have Toaster Treats, which is the Kroger brand. We have Frosted Strawberry Toaster Pastries by Great Value, which is the Walmart brand. And last but certainly not least, we have the reigning toaster pastry champion of the world, Pop Tarts.

I want to be really careful to not rip off Matt Mitchell’s Bless Your Rank, which I absolutely love. So instead of lining up these four contenders to the strawberry toaster pastry throne, I’m instead going to conduct this contest like a boxing match with an undercard and a main event, after which I will pit the winner of the undercard against the winner of the main event to give the underdog a shot at the title!

I will be judging on packaging, the look of the pastry and of course how they taste both untoasted and toasted.

I will not actually be swallowing any of these toxic treats. I’ll instead be taking a bite from the best corner of the pastry, chewing it, allowing it to roll around my palate for a moment, and then spitting it out while swishing my mouth with water between bites. I feel this is the most fair method of conducting this contest, and you deserve no less than the best!

I think we can all agree that Pop Tarts is the 900 pound gorilla in the room as far as worldwide popularity, followed most likely by Great Value, the Walmart brand. And that’s going to leave Millville Toaster Tarts and Kroger’s Frosted Toaster Treats as our undercard.

You guys ready? Come on, LET’S GET READY TO CRUMBLE!

Okay, here before me, we have our undercard match. We have Millville Toaster Tarts from Aldi, and we have Frosted Toaster Treats from Kroger.

Looking at the packaging… they both have pretty good packaging, I must say. I’m not crazy about the Millville logo. It doesn’t sound very appetizing, but then again, neither does Kroger to me. So I’m going to give it a tie on the packaging. Let’s crack ‘em open and see what we’ve got!

Here’s Millville Toaster Tarts. Foil, very basic foil.

And the frosting, you can see there’s a lot of edge exposed, but you might have to have that edge exposed. It seems to be rather thick, so that’s a good sign. The other pastry in the package has even less frosting on it, so I’m going to take the best one here and take an uncooked bite!

Not bad, not exactly bursting with flavor. The look of the coloring, it’s not bright red like I would expect. I’m going to go ahead and put this other whole pastry in my toaster here.

(Spit out and swish)

Now let’s look at Kroger Frosted Toaster Treats. Wait a minute… The foil design is absolutely identical! Is the toaster pastry going to be identical as well? I’m starting to get suspicious here.

They look almost exactly identical, except the Kroger brand has some blue greenish sprinkles on it, which the Millville Aldi brand does not.

I taste absolutely no difference between the two, but while I swish my mouth around, let’s go ahead and toast these babies. I’ve got my toaster set at about almost up to three, which is like the 10 o’clock position, which is normally where I like my toaster pastries. Let’s go ahead and get it cranking here.

Time for a little history about the brave little toaster! The first electric toaster was introduced in 1893 and was called the Eclipse. It was made by Crompton and Company out of Chelmsford Essex. It had iron bare wires toasting the bread. But the Eclipse had a serious problem. The technology wasn’t really there to have the wires last, at least not any length of time. And the wires would burn up really fast and the toaster would be junk in a very short amount of time.

The problem of the heating elements was solved in 1905 by a man named Albert Marsh who was an engineer and came up with an alloy of nickel and chromium or… “nichrome.”

The first automatic pop-up toaster was patented in 1921 by a man named Charles Streit. The Waters-Genter Company refined the design and proceeded to release the model 1A1 Toastmaster, the first automatic pop-up household toaster that could toast bread on both sides simultaneously, set itself on a timer and eject when finished.

(toaster ejects pastries)

And here we go!

Now I tasted Millville first and Kroger second so let’s be fair here and try the Kroger toasted first. I’ll grab it with some foil so I don’t burn myself. Woo woo woo woo woo woo woo woo! Hot! Hot! Hot!

(Neil takes a bite)…

Yummy! Once again, not exactly bursting with flavor but when it’s toasted it’s nice. It’s real nice.

Alright Millville Toaster Tarts. Let’s see if I can do this without any foil on my hand since it’s had a second to cool. Bite the side with the most frosting…

I gotta tell you, this is really really close… They are identical on their inner packaging. I’d be willing to bet that they’re made by the exact same company but the Kroger brand has an extra color of sprinkles on it and I kinda think that I got a little more flavor off the Kroger brand. So even though it’s very very close folks, I’m gonna have to give the undercard match to Kroger Frosted Toaster Treats!

WHICH BRINGS US TO OUR MAIN EVENT! 

POP TARTS vs. GREAT VALUE TOASTER PASTRIES!

The champion! The reigning supreme heavyweight in all the world without a question, without a doubt… Pop Tarts!

And the competitor who wants Pop Tarts Crown is Great Value Frosted Strawberry Toaster Pastries!

First let’s look at the packaging. I mean,(…) come on guys. They put almost no thought and no design whatsoever into the Great Value brand. There’s no question that Pop Tarts has the better branding and better packaging. Advantage Pop Tarts.

Let’s look at the inner foil: Pop Tarts has some design, the Pop Tarts logo on there and it’s blue.

Whereas the inner foil for the Great Value brand has the exact same foil design as both competitors from our undercard.

So generic is as generic does. I wouldn’t be surprised if this tasted absolutely no different than any of our undercard competitors, but we’re gonna give it a shot.

So I’m going to start here with the untoasted test with Great Value. And opening up the foil, I’m seeing some weird brown stuff in the grooves and I’m a little disturbed by that. It looks like it got burnt a little bit on the assembly line.

The front looks exactly the same as the Kroger brand. Same sprinkles, same everything, but it’s kinda mushed up. It looks like something happened to it. Yeah, same here with the 2nd pastry in the package. Something weird happened to the frosting here. But let’s give it a taste.

It looks and tastes absolutely no different than any of our undercard competitors.

Now, what about Pop-Tarts? Can Pop-Tarts live up to its legend?

Well… the Pop-Tarts brand looks exactly the same as the generic undercards. Maybe a little difference. The Pop-Tarts brand seems to have more holes. It’s not as thick on the edges, but it’s got the exact same kind of sprinkles and it seems to be frosted really terribly. There’s like almost no quality control on that frosting. It’s all the way to the edge on one part and definitely over the edge on another part. I mean, come on, come on Kellogg’s!

I’ll say the inside filling is red.The others were kind of like a dingy red. This is more a bright red, but honestly, that’s probably from some kind of weird chemical that you really shouldn’t be ingesting. You really shouldn’t be ingesting any of this and I’m not. I’m swishing my mouth between bites and spitting all of this out

I seem to be tasting a slight, very slight bit more sweetness from the Pop-Tart and it’s very slight, almost indistinguishable. So for the untoasted, I got to give it to Pop-Tarts.

Let’s try toasting them!

HISTORY OF POP TARTS!

I can’t really give you a lot of history on the Great Value brand because it’s a generic brand. So all I can really talk about here is Pop-Tarts. In the early 1960s, Post-cereals invented a process for dehydrating food and enclosing it in foil. The process was originally designed for packaging dog food, but they adapted it to produce the first toaster pastry in the world. It was called Country Squares. Post’s biggest competitor, Kellogg’s wasted no time jumping on this toaster pastry bandwagon and introduced their own called Fruit Scones that very same year. The name was soon changed to Pop-Tarts as a nod to the Pop-Art craze of the time. Pop-Tarts became so popular that the initial run sold out in just two weeks and Kellogg’s had to run apologetic advertising for the empty store shelves and this only increased the Pop-Tart fever across the nation. Of course Post cereals was left with their jaws on the floor and warehouses full of Country Squares wondering what the heck just happened!

“Frosted” Pop-Tarts didn’t debut until 1967.

Milton the Toaster, the brand’s mascot, debuted in 1971 and was voiced by an actor named William Shallert who was best known as the Dad on the Patty Duke show. Milton the Toaster was one of the few cartoon jobs that Shallert had. His main talent was the ability to time his voice overs perfectly and work quickly to save time and money in the production room.

As of 2024, there are over 20 Pop-Tart flavors including Hot Fudge, Sundae, S’mores, Raspberry, and Grape.

DANDY FUN FACT! Did you know that if you leave a strawberry Pop-Tart in your toaster for too long, it can burst into flames and it can go up to a foot and a half high? That’s right… fire! Fire!

This very situation happened in 1992 when Kellogg’s was sued for damages after a guy’s Pop-Tart got stuck in the toaster and caught on fire. Since then Pop-Tarts carry a warning on every box. It’s in tiny type on the back and barely noticeable. But it’s there. And it reads: If pastry is overheated, frosting filling can become extremely hot and could cause burns.(…) Due to possible risk of fire, never leave appliance unattended when in use.

Oh look, four ways to try Pop Tarts! Right from the foil, which we have tried. Toasted, which we’re about to try. Stacked, which means I guess you put two of them together. And frozen! I have never eaten a frozen toaster pastry before. If you have, please let me know!

(toaster ejects)

And here we go!

I think we should give the Great Value Frosted Strawberry Toaster Pastry first shot since it is the least known of the two!

Hmm… Not exactly bursting with flavor…I’d have to say that’s even less flavorful than either of our undercard competitors.

Let’s try the Pop-Tart… It kind of toasted up all funky. Really weird, it’s got, it’s all burned up on the side. I’m not impressed, Pop-Tarts, not impressed. Like that filling oozing out of the holes, it seems kind of thin. Seems to have a tiny bit more flavor than the Great Value brand.

And the look of the pastry… the Pop-Tart looks like a train wreck happened to it. Like someone ran over it with a something. I’d say the Great Value looks a little better, but that’s about all it’s got going on.

Hardly any difference in taste. The packaging for Pop-Tarts is much better. I’ve got to give the nod to Pop-Tarts. OUR MAIN EVENT WINNER IS POP TARTS!

FINAL SHOWDOWN!

And that brings us to our final showdown, which is going to be Kroger Frosted Toaster Treats against the mighty Pop-Tarts for Toaster Pastry Champion of the World!

Okay, back to basics. Packaging: Both of them are pretty darn good on the front. The back of the Kroger is pretty much the same as the front, almost. The back of Pop-Tarts, they put a little more effort into it. Gave you some fun stuff to look at, some fun things to ponder.

Pop-Tarts has the better packaging. There’s no doubt about that.

This Kroger Toaster Treat looks like it got ran over. The taste is still the same as before.

Okay, let’s try Pop-Tarts. Better inside packaging. We’ve already determined that. So advantage on the packaging overall goes to Pop-Tarts.

Do these look any better than before? No, it doesn’t look good. It just doesn’t. These Pop Tarts look worked over! They look like somebody’s already chewed these things up and spit them out and I didn’t really mention it before but they’re noticeably thinner than the generic brands! Awful! Just awful! They really look like somebody ran over these things with a truck!

Time to try it. Not nearly as much filling as the Kroger brand and really not much taste. I’m going to give advantage of Kroger brand on the amount of filling, the quality of the appearance and the thickness of the product in the cold stage. So right now, we’re kind of one-to-one.

Now let’s toast them up!

Who will it be? This is for all the toast! Will it be the world champion Pop-Tarts or the scrappy underdog Kroger Frosted Toaster Treats? It can only be one, folks!

(toaster ejects) Oh, a little smoke came up there!

All right. Two toasted toaster pastries. They both want to be world champion, but it can only be one. Ow! Ow! I’ve had my fingers burned by both. Let’s give it a second here. Okay.

I’ll taste the Pop-Tart…

Now the Kroger Frosted Toaster Treat…

The filling on the Kroger brand is bright red and very attractive, actually. Hmm. I guess it can vary from package to package.

The Kroger Frosted Toaster Treat, it’s good. It’s not exactly bursting with flavor, though.

Time to try the Pop Tart! This filling looks exactly the same color on the inside. Nicely toasted but overall It looks horrible. It doesn’t look appetizing, but I’m going to try it anyway.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner…

And it’s not Pop-Tarts.

Our winner of the Toaster Pastry Championship of the World is none other than KROGER FROSTED TOASTER TREATS!

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Anyway, I’m going to get on out of here. You guys, thanks for coming to the Dandy Fun House and hanging out with me right here, where everything is always… Fun and Dandy!

Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment and Productions, musician, DJ, Emcee and author. Aren’t you impressed?