Advertising / Pop-Tarts

CRAZY GOOD!

Pop-Tarts are a brand of toaster pastries from Kellogg's that first emerged in 1964. The main appeal of Pop-Tarts is the ability to heat the pastries quickly and conveniently in a toaster, a feature prominently advertised in the first Pop-Tart commercials, starring an anthropomorphic toaster named Milton. Since then, Pop-Tarts have become quite popular, and gone through several commercials that show off the efficiency of eating Pop-Tarts toasted, untoasted, or even frozen.

Their most successful advertising campaign, "Crazy Good," began in 2004 as a result of an effort to revitalize the Pop-Tarts brand by focusing more on children. The Pop-Tarts marketing team held workshops in schools where they collected children's artistic renditions of a "Pop-Tart kid world," which appeared to be an inventive, cartoonish world where Pop-Tarts had individual personalities. There are two kinds of characters featured in the "Crazy Good" advertisements: the anthropomorphic Pop-Tarts, and the ravenously hungry "Crazy Good Kids". Most of the ads have the Pop-Tarts characters get eaten one way or another — usually by the kids, but occasionally by an animal or even each other. Other characters pop up in the ads as well, the most prominent ones being the singing lizard who first appeared in the "Popartica" commercial and the pink poodle from the French Toast Pop-Tarts commercial. They enjoy snacking on the poor Pop-Tarts, as well.

---

Crazy Good Tropes:

• Accordion to Most Sailors: In a commercial from the 2000s, an anthropomorphic Toaster Strudel Pop-Tart sails on a ship playing an accordion.
• All There in the Manual: The identity of Ninja is never specified in the advertisements, with who he really is being locked behind an interactive web game. He's actually Vanilla Milkshake.
• Animate Inanimate Object:
  • Their first mascot was a friendly talking toaster named Milton.
  • A series of 1996 commercials featured a talking CGI toaster (presumably different from Milton) voiced by Gilbert Gottfried, demanding more appreciation for making Pop-Tarts hot. It's implied in another commercial that the talking got the toaster sent to a repair shop.
    Toaster: "Toaster makes funny noises?" What?! I'm just telling people what makes Kellogg's Pop-Tarts good!
• Anthropomorphic Food:
  • A commercial campaign in The '90s depicted boxes of Wild Berry Pop-Tarts, as well as the fruits of which they're made, as if they were feral animals. "You may want to bite them before they bite you!"
  • The "Crazy Good" commercials star giant, sentient Pop-Tarts.
• Babysitter from Hell: One advert has a babysitter (or worse) feeding a baby Pop-Tart peanut butter and jelly, then walking of with it in her arms and coming back with the jelly smeared all over her face.
• Belly Mouth: One of the kids has a mouth on his stomach, allowing him to eat Pop-Tarts in one gulp.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Pretty much everyone who wants to eat the Pop-Tarts is this but special mention goes to the dark-haired girl, not only dose she usually flirt with the Pop-Tarts before eating them, she's willing to get employed as a babysitter or a maternity nurse to be left alone with Pop-Tart children.
  • In one advert the poodle pretended to be a normal non-anthropomorphic dog so a Pop-Tart would go over to stroke it, then ran around him in circles to tie him in his collar and got up, removed the collar and calmly told him it's Nothing Personal.
• Black Comedy: The main joke of the "Crazy Good" commercials is seeing Pop-Tarts get eaten. One commercial has a baby Pop-Tart get eaten shortly after his birth.
• Breakout Character: When the commercials returned after a half-decade long hiatus, the kids were mostly written out in favor of the lizard and poodle. The once exception is the dark-haired girl. These three would remain the mainstays of the commercials.
• Chameleon Camouflage: During the "Hide 'n' Seek" campaign, the Splitz tart hides by standing against the door and wall of a nearby shop, which blend in with both his halves. Unfortunately, he gets snapped down the middle when somebody opens the door.
• Death of a Child: Played for Laughs with two ads centered around a baby peanut butter and jelly Pop-Tart; one saw it get eaten by (presumably) its babysitter, and the other one saw it get eaten by a nurse in a hospital while its horrified parents (a jar of peanut butter and a jar of jam) watch.
• Disguised in Drag: "Tea Party" has S'mores disguise himself as "Miss Tibbles, Queen of the Tables". Unfortunately for him, the dark-haired girl immediately sees through his disguise.
• Dwindling Party: In one Christmas-themed ad, a group of tarts going caroling door-to-door. After each house, one tart is missing from the group, implying they've been eaten by the homeowner, until only a single tart is left, nervously singing "Silent Night". Then the owner invites the last tart inside her house...
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first "Crazy Good" commercial features no anthropomorphic Pop-Tarts at all, and instead consists of a kid in a hat trying to get his Pop-Tart back from a kangaroo who ate it.
• Gender Flip: When the poodle was first introduced to advertise French Toast Pop-Tarts, they were female with a French accent. After being reintroduced following the hiatus, however, they became male with a low voice.
• Genie in a Bottle: Parodied in the "Popartica" ad, where a Pop-Tart genie emerges from a toaster.
• Gratuitous Japanese: The "Ninja" commercial has Ninja speak snippets of Japanese.
• Groupie:
  • A fangirl Pop-Tart approaches what she believes is her favorite band's tour bus. The lizard directs her to stand on top to meet them. In reality, it's a toaster.
    Lizard: Groupies are easy.
  • In another ad, a woman pretends to be one of these in order to get close enough to eat a celebrity Pop-Tart.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Due to hiding right on top of a door hinge, the Splitz tart gets split right down the middle as soon as somebody opens the door.
• Hope Spot: One commercial had a Pop-Tart pop himself out of the toaster and briefly enjoy freedom... before flying right into the freezer.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Implied in the commercial for Printed Fun Pop-Tarts. A couple of Pop-Tarts eat pictures that show up on their frosting. Then another Pop-Tart walks up, and the picture on its icing is...a screaming Pop-Tart. The other two tarts slowly back away as the cannibalistic Pop-Tart approaches them menacingly.
• Inconsistent Coloring: In real life, Blueberry Pop-Tarts are nearly indistinguishable from Strawberry, having white frosting with rainbow sprinkles. In the ads, however, possibly to distinguish the two, Blueberry Pop-Tarts instead have light blue frosting with dark blue sprinkles.
• Let's Meet the Meat:
  • The "I Want to Live!" variant frequently occurs in the "Crazy Good" commercials, where the large anthropomorphic Pop-Tarts desperately try to escape the hungry kids.
  • The "Eat Me" variant came to play when Kellogg's placed the Pop-Tarts brand as the sponsor of the middle college football bowl game in Orlando in 2023. The Pop-Tarts Bowl had an anthropomorphic Strawberry Pop-Tart as the mascot. At the end of the game, it jumped into a toaster, and a large toasted Pop-Tart was slid out afterward for the winning team to consume.
• Literalist Snarking: In "Blueberry + Cherry", the Lizard snarkily deconstructs Blueberry's metaphor for milk.
  Blueberry: I used to have a lady!
  I called her Ms. Cherry.
  She ended up in a toaster, next to an 8 ounce glass of dairy!
  Lizard: That's cold... milk. (trips Blueberry on the recliner)
• Loophole Abuse: One commercial features a "Two Flavors" figure skating competition. It's intended for two tarts of different flavors to join, but the Splitz tart joins on his own and wins because he is technically two flavors.
• Money, Dear Boy: In-Universe. The Lizard didn't do commercials. He was told to do it for his fans and he said no. He was told to do it for the kids. He was told to do it for the money and he said, "Okay".
• No Party Like a Donner Party: One ad has two Pop-Tarts stuck in a freezer, trying to figure out how to escape. One tart declares that they need food, then eyes the other. Then it cuts to the first tart alone in the freezer with a Balloon Belly.
• Pain Mistaken for Sex: In "Yummy", Chocolatey Strawberry and Cinnamon Roll can hear one of the Crazy Good Kids inside of Blue Raspberry's backstage room making rather suggestive noises. Cinnamon Roll thinks they may have encountered Coitus Uninterruptus, only for the door to open and reveal that Blue Raspberry has been completely eaten.
• Signs of Disrepair: The "Pop the Vote" ad started as a "MEET THE CANDIDATES" debate between various Pop-Tarts. Once the moderator (the pink poodle) sends the candidates into a toaster beneath the stage, the "M" on the sign, which is a paper sheet, falls off, so it reads, "EET THE CANDIDATES."
• Slogans:
  • During The '90s, commercials used variants of "So hot, they're cool; so cool, they're hot!" Often this was sung as a jingle.
  • The post-2004 animated commercials use "Crazy good!" as the slogan.
  • The ice cream based flavors have their own slogans. The first was "Best eaten frozen!", and later on, "Chewy, Chocolatey, Frozen Pop-Tarts, Freeze 'em and Eat 'em!".
• Snowlems: When Pop-Tarts advertising introduces the Cookies and Creme flavor, a boy makes a snowman and puts the said tart in his belly. The snowman comes alive to steal it and then his head falls off.
• Stick Figure Animation: The "Crazy Good" ads.
• The Tease: The dark-haired girl has a tendency of flirting with the Pop-Tarts to lull them into a false sense of security, and then eating them. "Yummy" even makes it sound like she's having sex with Blue Raspberry, before it's revealed that she was just eating him.
• Three Wishes: When a kid releases a Pop-Tart genie from a toaster, he gets three wishes. His first wish is for a singing lizard, and his second is for the biggest box of Pop-Tarts in the world. His lizard says his third wish should be a bigger toaster.
• Tongue on the Flagpole: Exploited when a Strawberry Milkshake Pop-Tart sees the North Pole, clumsily edited to say "Lick This Pole", and licks it. This traps the tart in the snow, so a nearby girl can eat it frozen.
• Too Desperate to Be Picky: When S'mores finds himself in a girl's bedroom, he's disgusted by the girly décor, but then gets the idea to use it to disguise himself as "Miss Tibbles, Queen of the Tables".
• Too Dumb to Live: The "Cinnamon Buns Are Easy" commercial (later redone with a Strawberry tart) features a Pop-Tart desperately looking for a hiding place away from the kids. The lizard directs the tart to hide in a giant toaster. The tart jumps in, and once the kids are gone, the lizard activates the toaster to cook the tart.
  Lizard: Too easy.
• Would Hurt a Child: The doctor in the PB&J ad eats a newborn PB&J Pop-Tart. In front of the parents, no less. In another one, she's a Babysitter from Hell.
• Yodel Land: The Toaster Strudel Pop-Tart speaks with a German accent, wears lederhosen, and is so obsessed with yodeling, the Crazy Good Kids yodeling easily lures him out of his hiding place.

---