In 2023, Pop-Tarts changed the world of brand mascots forever when it sacrificed the life of a Strawberry Pop-Tart and fed its remains to the Kansas State football team as a reward for winning the Pop-Tarts Bowl game. The weirdly macabre stunt got 4 billion media impressions, and in the eight weeks following the game, parent company Kellanova sold 21 million more Pop-Tarts than in the eight weeks before the game.
Riding on that success, the brand upped its ambitions and brought three flavors to the Pop-Tarts Bowl last year, letting the winning team’s MVP choose which one was toasted and eaten (Iowa State’s quarterback, Rocco Becht, picked Frosted Cinnamon Roll). Now Pop-Tarts has announced that it’s dramatically expanding its “edible mascot” lineup for the next big game, scheduled to be played in Orlando’s Camping World Stadium on December 27th.
Six edible Pop-Tarts mascots—three on Team Sprinkles and three on Team Swirls—will be up for mass consumption, with fans voting ahead of time on which team should be sacrificed.
For Pop-Tarts, it’s a significant jump in both sacrificial anthropomorphic breakfast pastry and the stakes for its brand stunt strategy. Many viewers will undoubtedly be giddy at the prospect of doubling the number of mascots involved, but there’s a cost to escalating the premise so much in such a short period of time: Pop-Tarts is now entering into an unnecessary arms race with itself.
When I posed this theory to the brand’s VP of marketing, Leslie Serro, she didn’t agree. “Expanding from three to six edible mascots this year isn’t about an arms race; it’s about evolution,” she says. Serro tells me that they concluded after last year’s success that fans have an “insatiable appetite for the playful and unexpected nature of the Pop-Tarts Bowl.” Thus, the doubling down from three to six mascots and “raising the stakes.”
To be fair, will I be looking for social clips from the game on the 27th, in that dead zone between Christmas and New Year’s? Sure. Serro’s got me there. But will I feel as sick as if I ate six Pop-Tarts rather than just one (or even three)? Yes.
Let me explain why Pop-Tarts, which so brilliantly spoke to the culture two years ago, risks toasting all that goodwill.
