Last Call: The Pop-Tarts We'll Only Ever Know In Our Hearts

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By  Marnie Shure

There's an oft-overlooked but important aspect of media literacy, and that's spotting fakes. Seems like everyone is a Photoshop wizard these days, so when you see something that's too good to be true, know that it usually is. This week, that thing was a new variety of Pop-Tart.

Flamin' Hot Pop-Tarts? None of us at The Takeout allowed ourselves to get too excited about this, not only because the image of the box is suspiciously zoomed-in, but because the pastry on the right looks too homemade, too pliant, to have been mass-produced. We were right to be suspicious.

"We make 24 flavors of Pop Tarts, but that is still not enough for the Internet," Kellogg's Media Relations told The Takeout in an email. "We always get a thrill out of seeing what it comes up with next, but unfortunately Flamin' Hot Pop-Tarts is not real."

Well, at least we now know that Kellogg's gets a kick out of these fakes as much as we do. And in the grand tradition of P[hotosh]op-Tarts on Twitter, other "new flavors" soon followed.

Assuming that Ranch and Orange Juice & Toothpaste Pop-Tarts are meant to maximize reader disgust, what flavors actually would make delicious additions to the Pop-Tarts lineup? It's hard to think of varieties that haven't already been piloted. There was a peanut butter one two years ago, but it seems not to be part of the lineup anymore. Maybe some spin on peanut butter and banana would be fun? With chocolate frosting?

Sweet cheese is also another area Pop-Tarts could expand into. I'd love to see Kellogg's answer to cheese blintzes, wouldn't you? My brain is actually tired from trying to think up flavors Pop-Tarts hasn't already attempted in its 55 years of innovating. But you're all geniuses; you'll root them out.

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