w000t. The best breakfast food of all time just turned 40!
http://www.detnews.com/2003/business...ess-128483.htm
Kellogg's popular, pioneering Pop-Tarts turn 40 this year
By James Prichard / Associated Press
BATTLE CREEK, Mich. -- Bill Post knew that he had a hit on his hands when his children kept asking him to bring home some more of those fruit scones from work.
It was September 1963 when Post, then the manager of a Keebler Food Co. plant in Grand Rapids, was approached by Kellogg Co. to help the Battle Creek cereal giant develop a breakfast food for the toaster.
When Post took home some early examples of what the two companies were jointly developing, he found that his children loved fixing and eating the flat, fruit-filled pastries.
"I used to bring a lot of stuff home -- samples you'd run -- and they'd turn up their noses, they didn't like this or that," Post recalls. "But they used to ask me, ăBring those fruit scones home.' That's what we called them at first, internally. Fruit scones. ăBring some of those home, will you, Dad?"'
Pop-Tarts were born.
They were an instant hit when test-marketed in Cleveland in late 1963. Post, now 75 and a new-product consultant for Kellogg, which acquired Keebler two years ago, says Kellogg sold out of all 45,000 cases of each of the four original, unfrosted flavors -- strawberry, blueberry, apple currant and brown sugar cinnamon -- it had prepared for the test run.
The pioneering toaster pastry would go on to become Kellogg's strongest brand and a staple found in millions of American kitchens, office desk drawers and college dorm rooms. Pop-Tarts also are sold in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Despite an expanding selection of convenience breakfast foods such as granola bars, fruit bars and frozen sandwiches on the market, Pop-Tarts continue to grow in popularity, says Jeff Montie, president of Kellogg's morning foods division.
The company now sells about 2 billion Pop-Tarts each year in United States, which is double the sales of the early 1990s, he says.
"Today, it's our number-one brand," Montie says. "It has had great growth over the last 20 to 25 years. It continues to grow and is just one of those brands that we always think, is there more upside in it?"
The original Pop-Tarts bore only a slight resemblance to today's product. Though they've always had the small "docker" holes to allow the steam from the heated filling to escape, the pastries used to have rounded corners and a diagonal crimp running through the middle.
Frosting wasn't added until the late 1960s, says Post, who retired as a senior vice president of Keebler in 1985 and now lives next to Glen Lake in Leelanau County. Post came up with the idea after running some Pop-Tarts through a cookie-icing machine.
He took some of the frosted Pop-Tarts to show Bill Lamothe, a Kellogg executive in charge of the pastry's development at the company. Lamothe would go on to become chairman and chief executive officer of Kellogg.
"So I came to Battle Creek with toaster in hand, with icing on Pop-Tarts," Post says. "We put 'em in the toaster, showed him it didn't melt. And he said, ăWow, that's really something."'
Within an hour, Lamothe instructed Post to frost all varieties of Pop-Tarts -- a quick decision that exemplified Kellogg's entrepreneurial spirit at the time, Post says.
"We just doubled the market with that one decision made in one day," he says. "That's how astute Kellogg is at detecting trends."
Today, Kellogg offers 28 varieties of Pop-Tarts. The most popular are frosted strawberry, frosted brown sugar cinnamon and S'mores, the company says.
The newest, Pop-Tarts Yogurt Blasts, started appearing on store shelves in March in two flavors, strawberry and blueberry. Each contains a mix of fruit and yogurt filling.
"With a brand that has been around for nearly 40 years, it's incredibly important that we understand the changes in consumer tastes and trends ... to ensure that it is still popular throughout the years," says Jenny Enochson, a Kellogg spokeswoman.
Children and teenagers remain the biggest consumers of Pop-Tarts. Kellogg expanded the line with Snack Stix, an afternoon-snack version, and Pastry Swirls, which are targeted for adults.
Montie says he believes there are two primary reasons for Pop-Tarts' continued growth: Adults who ate them as children continue to eat them as well as feed them to their own children, and Kellogg's aggressive advertising and promotion of the brand.
Over the years, competitors such as Pillsbury, Nabisco and Post have introduced toaster pastries of their own, with varying degrees of success.
At Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Shaun Zmuda, a 20-year-old junior from Detroit, says he has eaten Pop-Tarts since childhood and "at least three or four times a week" grabs one before heading to class in the morning. His favorites are frosted cherry and frosted brown sugar cinnamon.
"They're good-tasting and you can eat them cold or warm," says Zmuda.
His friend, Lindsay Ruby, 19, a sophomore at the school from Rochester Hills, says she rarely used to eat Pop-Tarts until she entered college. Now she eats them about twice a week, and not always in the morning.
"If I didn't get to get to eat lunch or something, I like a Pop-Tart -- as long as I didn't eat them in the morning," says Ruby, whose favorite flavor is frosted strawberry.
Bob Keith, a professor of nutrition and food science at Auburn University, says there's nothing wrong with occasionally having a Pop-Tart for breakfast.
"They are fortified with certain vitamins. They have some sugar in them but they're not really high in fat," Keith says. "So, if you ate that Pop-Tart with a glass of milk, for example, in the mornings, that would be an acceptable breakfast for some breakfasts out of that week."
But he cautions against overindulging.
"If you're eating Pop-Tarts every day, I would say that you probably ought to do some other things for breakfast that could improve your variety," Keith says.
On the Net:
Kellogg Co.,
http://www.kelloggs.com/
40th anniversary of Pop Tarts!!!
