How Kellogg’s answered Post’s Country Squares.

Pop-Tarts began as a reply. Both Kellogg’s and Post were born in Battle Creek, Michigan, and in a history published on 3 May 2024, Smithsonian magazine’s Gregory Wakeman wrote that in 1963 Post was ahead in the race to a toaster breakfast. On 16 February 1964, the magazine said, Post unveiled its new product, Country Squares, to the press — but the squares were not ready for the shops, and the company kept working on the recipe. English Wikipedia says they were eventually marketed as Post “Tostem Pop-Ups”.

Kellogg’s used the gap. In a statement to Smithsonian, Kellanova said that in late 1963 the company approached William “Bill” Post, then managing a Keebler plant in Grand Rapids, to help develop the pastry. CNN, reporting on him in February 2024, said he had helped create the toaster pastry for the Hekman Biscuit Company, which later became Keebler. The product was at first called Fruit Scones; Smithsonian says Kellogg’s decided the name lacked the right ring and, inspired by Andy Warhol’s Pop Art, changed it to Pop-Tarts. Wikipedia describes the name as a pun on the movement.

The launch followed in the autumn. Wikipedia gives the introduction date as 14 September 1964, and Smithsonian says the pastries went on a test run in Cleveland that September, where the city’s stores sold out. According to Kellanova’s statement to the magazine, from 3 November 1964 Kellogg’s ran full-page, four-colour newspaper advertisements with coupons. Wikipedia lists the first four flavours as strawberry, blueberry, brown sugar cinnamon and apple currant, the last soon renamed apple-berry.

The first Pop-Tarts were unfrosted. Wikipedia says Kellogg’s then developed a frosting that could withstand the toaster, and the first frosted Pop-Tarts went on sale in 1967; sprinkles were added to several flavours in 1968. The pastry itself, Wikipedia says, is a sweet filling sealed between two thin rectangular layers of crust, usually sold in pairs in Mylar packets, and the brand is written in lower case with a dot between the words, as “pop•tarts”.

From Kellogg’s to Kellanova to Mars.

For nearly six decades Pop-Tarts was simply a Kellogg Company brand. That changed in 2023. English Wikipedia says that on 2 October 2023 Kellogg’s North American cereal business was spun off as WK Kellogg Co, and the remaining company — snacks plus international cereal — renamed itself Kellanova, a name combining “Kell” with the Latin nova, “new”. Pop-Tarts went with Kellanova, which Wikipedia says is headquartered in Chicago, alongside brands such as Pringles and Cheez-It.

Kellanova itself did not last long as an independent company. In a press release dated 11 December 2025 from McLean, Virginia and Chicago, Mars, Incorporated announced that it had completed its acquisition of Kellanova, naming Pop-Tarts in the portfolio alongside Pringles, Cheez-It, Rice Krispies Treats, RXBAR and Kellogg’s international cereal brands. Mars said it had announced the agreement on 14 August 2024, that Kellanova shareholders had approved it on 1 November 2024, and that all required regulatory approvals were in place as of 8 December 2025. Mars has owned Pop-Tarts since December 2025, as part of its Mars Snacking business, which the release said would also take in Nutri-Grain bars.

Between those corporate changes the brand kept up its own spectacle. Wikipedia says a temporary store called Pop-Tarts World opened in Times Square, New York, on 10 August 2010, with a café and a vending machine called the Varietizer, and that it closed on 31 December 2010. The pastries reached Britain with a marketing push in the early 1990s, Wikipedia says, though only a handful of flavours are sold in Europe.

The rivalry that started it all became a film. Smithsonian reported that Jerry Seinfeld and the writer Spike Feresten turned the Post-versus-Kellogg’s race into Unfrosted, a comedy released on Netflix on 3 May 2024 — a film the magazine described as about as far from a biopic as a movie can get.

Design and documentation.

American breakfast brands speak a shared visual language that grew up on the grocery shelf. Pancake and baking mixes have long been sold in upright cardboard boxes whose front panels work like small posters, with a stack of pancakes, a pat of butter or a pour of syrup shown large enough to read from the end of an aisle. Warm colours — golden yellows, browns, reds and creams — recur because they borrow the look of the food itself.

Syrup brings its own design problem, because the bottle stays on the table for the whole meal. Shapes, handles, caps and labels therefore do as much brand work as the logo, and some bottles are recognised by silhouette alone. Mascots and characters, from cheerful cooks to friendly figures drawn for children, have given many breakfast names a face, while short, sing-song slogans carry them through radio, television and the side of the box.

Ownership adds another layer. Many familiar breakfast names have passed between millers, food groups and investment firms over the decades while keeping the same box colours, bottle shapes and slogans on the shelf. Each guide in this group looks at how one name has used those tools, and at who owns it today.

A talking toaster, a slogan and an edible mascot.

The brand’s advertising has leaned on characters. Wikipedia says that in the 1970s Kellogg’s revitalised Pop-Tarts advertising with a talking toaster named Milton, voiced in television and radio commercials by the actor William Schallert; Milton’s likeness went on to mugs, plates, paint sets and board games. In 2004, Wikipedia says, Pop-Tarts introduced the campaign “Crazy Good”, whose commercials used squiggly, hand-drawn-style animation and surreal humour, with recurring characters including a singing lizard and a gang of “crazy-good kids” who chased the pastries. “Crazy Good” remains the brand’s tagline in Wikipedia’s infobox.

Sport became the newest stage. In a press release from Orlando dated 31 May 2023, Kellogg’s announced that Pop-Tarts would be title sponsor of the Pop-Tarts Bowl, a college football game at Camping World Stadium organised by Florida Citrus Sports, with the first edition under the name played on 28 December 2023. The release said the game had most recently been known as the Cheez-It Bowl, and that the multi-year deal included naming rights, in-stadium presence and sampling. Heidi Ray, the brand’s senior director of marketing, described Pop-Tarts there as having turned “toast and jam into an ingenious toaster pastry”.

The bowl also produced a new kind of mascot. Wikipedia says that at the December 2023 game a strawberry Pop-Tart mascot went viral on social media after it descended into a giant toaster and was “eaten” by the winning team, Kansas State, setting off a wave of internet memes. Wikipedia says that in 2024 the bowl held a fan vote among Cinnamon Roll, Hot Fudge Sundae and Wild Berry for the next mascot, and that Cinnamon Roll was toasted after Iowa State beat Miami.

For a design guide, Pop-Tarts shows how a product named after an art movement can keep its identity playful through ownership changes, from a talking toaster to an edible mascot. Compare it with Cheez-It, the stablemate that gave the same bowl its earlier name, and Nutri-Grain, another Kellogg’s breakfast brand now owned by Mars. For this guide we use box blue and deep blue with frosting pink and a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Pop-Tarts’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.