Pop-Tarts, they aren’t that good [Media Notes 119 D]

I’ve been working away on Unfrosted and have been having trouble bringing a long article to a close. I came across an interesting review by Owen Gleiberman in Variety. Here’s the third and fourth paragraphs:

As a kid growing up in the late ’60s and ’70s, I confess that I never understood Pop-Tarts. My family would buy them, and every so often I would put one in the toaster, wanting it to be a tasty treat. Such is the power of advertising that I always thought it was my fault that I found Pop-Tarts to be…just okay. Twinkies, by contrast, were junky but succulent. And even good old dry cereal, when you were in the mood for it, was pretty great — the delicate crunch of Rice Krispies, the sweet-milk-bath rapture of Sugar Frosted Flakes. To me, though, Pop-Tarts never lived up to their billing. They were bland when untoasted (though a lot of folks ate them that way). Once you toasted them, the hot fruit filling had a soothing tasty tang, but the rectangular pastry was still cardboard pie crust. It wasn’t awful, but it’s not like biting into it gave you a rush of joy. Prefab and a little dull, the Pop-Tart was a “product of the future” that seemed stuck in the past, like astronaut food.

I bring all this up because “Unfrosted” treats the origin story of the Pop-Tart with such a derisive, backhand flippancy that it’s not at all clear what Jerry and his team of screenwriter-producers [...] actually think of the Pop-Tart. Is the movie a goof because they’re making fun of what a mediocre product it was? Perhaps. Yet if the memory of Pop-Tarts actually strikes a chord of Proustian reverence in Jerry — if it’s his madeleine stuffed with fake-fruit chemicals — then why make such a misanthropic satire of it?

YES!

I’m a bit older than Seinfeld. I remember the Cuban missile crisis. And I remember Pop-Tarts.

I don’t think I ever ate one. We certainly didn’t keep them around the house. My mother prided herself on her pastry skills too much to put up with Pop-Tarts. Of course, making good pastry takes time, so we didn’t have it often, but her Danish, from a recipe she got from my grandmother...to die for! Anyhow, I actually went out and bought a package of Pop-Tarts, mostly do I could get a photo or two. They’re not that good. Putting some jelly on toast isn’t hard – ordinary jelly and standard supermarket white bread, nothing artisanal – and it tastes better.

So I’m with Gleiberman on Pop-Tarts in and of themselves. And I agree with him on that second paragraph as well. It’s not clear what Seinfeld’s attitude toward them actually is. The whole thing is a bit scattered and unfocused. I think Gleiberman’s reference to Proust is spot-on. As my friend David Porush just remarked (on the phone), this is very much an act of memory. Seinfeld is remembering the old days, but framing them in a series of ironic comic miniatures to keep them from being too seductive.