Pop-Tart Reviews from 2021: A Strange Smorgasbord of Storebought Sweets

Preface#

Reading this, you may find it quite odd that I’m writing reviews about pop-tarts of all things, but then again if you know me it might make a little more sense. That being said, hear me out. The origin of this series of reviews is a story that starts around 11 months ago from the writing of this post, in late March of 2021.

At the time, my life was very different than it is now. It was a difficult year in school, with the brutal combination of advanced classes and online school. In addition, I had very little contact with many of my friends due to said pandemic. One thing that the pandemic granted me, however, was free time, even despite all the homework and studying. One of the ways I used this time was going on long walks. I would go on walks for hours at a time, stop by the grocery store near home to pick up a quick snack, then head home. While I often listened to various podcasts during my walks, as I started being more involved in this little TGMC (TeenagersGaming Minecraft) community called Spirit City, I began to socialize more during these walks, talking in chat as I was sitting near a pond, or even voice chatting or livestreaming during them. During this time, I also noticed that there were so many odd flavors of pop-tart at the store. Thus, I randomly decided to write a review on the one I bought, sending this in chat:

I made reviews of a few of the ones I had tried up till then, and the chat found it pretty funny, so I incorporated it into my regular routine for a few weeks. Eventually, I did move on and started spending my at the time nonexistent money on arguably tastier things, but the pop tart reviews overall symbolize a time in quarantine that, despite being stressful, I was able to still find fun in, and a bygone community that I had some great times in (shoutout to cheese, laz, rice, emerald, ghosti, and many more awesome folks).

I thought of these reviews recently when I was grocery shopping and found yet another odd pop-tart flavor that had cropped up, and had the idea to compile these reviews into a blog post to preserve them for posterity.

The Reviews#

For these reviews, I (mostly) used a simple 1-10 scale, with 1 being abhorrent and 10 being somewhat good. Note that these scores and reviews are not meant to be objective whatsoever, and are likely very skewed as, frankly, I’m the opposite of the target demographic for pop-tarts. I’m someone with a distaste for sweet foods, and texture is a very big thing for me in foods. Not exactly the audience for a food characterized by being sickly sweet and having a dry and awful testure. That being said, I feel like it makes these reviews significantly more fun.

Strawberry Milkshake Flavor#

Review posted on 3/22/2021

It tastes decent. Classic poptart. Only thing is the filling is really sweet, so you like cant eat more than 1 without feeling sick

Rating: 5/10

Froot Loops Flavor#

Review posted on 3/22/2021

This one is interesting, it actually does have the trademark fruit loop taste. The unique taste actually helps mask the usual sickly sweetness of pop tarts, making this a great eat.

Rating: 7/10

Caramel Sea Salt Pretzel Flavor#

Review posted on 3/22/2021

On paper this seems like a good idea, but in reality they’re awful. The filling is just too sweet and barely tastes like proper caramel with sea salt. The pretzel outer later peels apart and doesn’t hold together, and the weird “crust” layer on the outside feels and tastes like plastic.

Rating: 1/10

Frosted Apple Flavor#

Review posted on 3/24/2021

This one isn’t too bad, but it’s nothing special, the apple filling is decent but a bit overpowering, and there’s no real gimmicks

Rating: 6/10

S’mores Flavor#

Review posted on 3/29/2021

I thought this one was going to be overly sweet, but it’s actually really good. The filling isn’t that sweet, and the graham cracker outside balances it out really well. In addition, the inside has alternating stripes of chocolate and marshmallow, giving it a very unique texture when bitten that is really satisfying.

Rating: 9/10

Cupcake Confetti Flavor#

Review posted on 3/31/2021

I thought I would hate this one, and that it would be super sugary, but I was really wrong. The interesting thing ab this one is that instead of the usual frosting-like filling, this one has a much thicker almost Oreo-filling like filling that’s actually super tasty. It’s pretty bland but it tastes decent

Rating: 8/10

Frosted Cinnamon Roll Flavor#

Review posted on 4/3/2021

What can I say. This is my favorite pop tart to date. It’s everything you could want out of a pop tart, in perfect balance. The filling isn’t overpoweringly sweet, and it complements the pop tart outer layer perfectly in consistency and taste. It doesn’t have any gimmick, or anything super fancy, it just tastes good.

Rating: 10/10

Frosted Chocolate Churro Flavor#

Review posted on 4/7/2021

This is absolutely disgusting. Completely vile. It’s just wrong and whoever made it has clearly done it with the aim of spitting in the face of god. It is absolutely god awful and I wanted to vomit after the first bite not even a joke it was actually really disgusting, worst $2.50 I’ve ever wasted.

Rating: -1/10

Homemade Pop-Tarts#

Reviews posted on 4/12/2021

These pop-tarts are ones that I made as part of a recipe contest I attempted to run as a member of the r/teenagers Event Team (this contest was ultimately a failure unfortunately). Of course, having made my own pop-tarts, I had to create some totally unbiased reviews for them. I reviewed my homemade crust recipe, as well as the two fillings I made:

The Crust

I nailed the crust down pretty well, it ended up being not too sweet, and surprisingly similiar to the texture of real pop tarts, except that they’re way more buttery and aren’t dry enough to suck the moisture out of the entire Atlantic Ocean.

Cinnamon Cream Cheese (Homemade)

As expected, god tier. Tasted amazing, the cream cheese filling perfectly balanced out the butteriness of the crust, resulting in an overall very delicious experience.

Rating: 9/10

Beef (Homemade)

This surprised me. I kinda expected it to taste horrible once I smelled what was coming from the oven. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The buttery richness of the crust played well with the savoriness of the beef, which melted into the crust itself, resulting in a great taste. My only regret is forgetting to add the cheese.

Rating: 8/10

Wild Berry Flavor#

Review posted on 4/13/2021

This one has an… interesting look, like a pop tart from an alternate dimension. Taste wise, however, it tastes pretty normal, the same as any other pop tart with a fruit filling. Nothing special, but it tastes good

Rating: 6/10

Hot Fudge Sundae Flavor#

Review posted on 11/27/2021

This is a peculiar one. First of all, they call it “hot” despite it being the exact same temperature as every other pop tart on the shelf. In addition, the name nor even the packaging fully give you an impression of what it actually is. The “crust” is lightly chocolate flavored, while the inside is a sickly sweet vanilla frosting, and it’s frosted on the top with more vanilla. On the edge, the mild chocolate crust balances out the sweetness of the filling, however by the center it just gets simply too sweet. Whatever it is, it doesn’t really give an impression of any sort of fudge sundae. Overall, it’s not actively bad, but doesn’t have any of the traits of a pleasant to eat pop tart, nor does it’s taste resemble what it’s trying to be.

Rating: 4/10

Eggo Frosted Maple Flavor#

Review posted on 2/27/2022

I did not expect to like this. The main reason this pop tart works is because quite frankly it’s barely a pop tart. The crust is different, it’s a harder texture than normal, which makes it crumblier but somehow allows it to lessen that “dehydrating your mouth” feel that the usual pop tart crust does. The “filling” is less of a filling as it’s actually somewhat hard, akin to like a chewy toffee texture, and is quite mildly sweet for being “maple flavored”. It’s actually a very nice sweetness level and overall this pop tart works very well even if it feels a bit alien compared to other pop tarts. Only docking a point because the flavor itself is quite generic, pretty much amounting to “sugar”. Overall solid pick though surprisingly enough.

Rating: 9/10

Epilogue#

Overall, was this a useful or productive use of my time or money? Probably not. But it was fun, and I had some great laughs about it with my friends in a time where social interaction wasn’t easy for anyone, and a time in my life where I certainly needed it. To all of my friends from Spirit City, thank y’all so much for being there to have laughs and fun with. I’ll always look upon those afternoon walks talking to y’all very fondly.