The Story Behind Jerry Seinfeld’s Pop-Tarts Movie

Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted, a characteristic movie concerning the heated race to create the toaster pastry Pop-Tarts, begins streaming as we speak (Could 3) on Netflix. In his directorial debut, Seinfeld additionally stars as Kellogg’s head of growth, dealing with cereal mascots and milkmen up in arms as a result of they’re afraid {that a} breakfast meals that doesn’t require milk goes to run them out of enterprise.

The film, which additionally stars Hugh Grant and Amy Schumer, was greater than a decade within the making. Seinfeld and Unfrosted screenwriter Spike Feresten, a Seinfeld author, joked about making a film primarily based on the comic’s favourite breakfast way back to 2013. However then got here the COVID-19 pandemic, when Seinfeld needed to cease doing standup, and he and Feresten took a stab at turning the within joke right into a film for the surface world. Each writers discovered the youngsters cereal enterprise inherently hilarious, Feresten tells TIME, imagining “severe males in fits inventing foolish issues for youths.”

Whereas the film is a complete farce, it’s grounded within the historic rivalry between America’s greatest makers of breakfast cereal. Kellogg and Submit have been each based in Battle Creek, Michigan, and had a protracted historical past of competing towards one another. Within the early 1900s, C.W. Submit stole a Kellogg recipe for corn flakes, which he dubbed ‘post-toasties.’ Howard Markel, a historian who wrote a guide about Kellogg, describes the businesses to TIME as at all times “preventing like cats and canine, like Ford and Common Motors.”

An area race for breakfast meals

Quick-forward to the Sixties, when Submit and Kellogg have been competing to develop a breakfast meals for toasters on the identical time. The film likens the race to the house race, with Kellogg introducing its “style pilots” as in the event that they have been NASA astronauts. In actuality, Submit had introduced that its “Nation Squares” have been within the works, wrapped in foil, however Kellogg beat them to the market in 1964. 

The important thing ingredient to Kellogg’s Pop-Tart success was recruiting Invoice Submit in 1963, who was managing a Hekman (later Keebler Meals Co.) plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Submit took residence some Pop-Tart prototypes to his youngsters, and so they have been a success. His youngsters “used to ask me, ‘Deliver these fruit scones residence,’” he instructed the Related Press in 2003. “That’s what we referred to as them at first, internally. Fruit scones. ‘Deliver a few of these residence, will you Dad?’” Within the film, youngsters do play a key function as taste-testers: Seinfeld discovers youngsters snacking on leftovers in Submit’s dumpster.

Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts have been a success with a check market in Cleveland in late 1963. The next 12 months, Kellogg instantly bought out of the 4 authentic flavors—strawberry, blueberry, apple currant, and brown sugar cinnamon. Kellogg’s added frosting in 1967 after which sprinkles in 1968, per Submit’s suggestion. Now Pop-Tarts come in additional than two dozen flavors, and factories churn out about 7 million Pop-Tarts a day. At one level, Invoice Submit drove a automotive with an arrogance plate that learn “Pop Tart.”

Pop-Tarts have been a product of its second. The Pop-Tarts’ web site says the identify—coined by Kellogg government William LaMothe—is a play on the favored Pop-Artwork motion of the Sixties. And as ladies climbed the ranks at their jobs, empowered by the ladies’s motion of the Sixties and Seventies, they wanted a breakfast their youngsters may eat shortly, in line with Heather Arndt Anderson’s Breakfast: A Historical past.

Tony the Tiger

A number of characters within the film are fictionalized variations of actual individuals. Jack LaLanne, a Kellogg style pilot performed by James Marsden, went on to pioneer residence train, and within the film, he conjures up Pop-Tarts’ foil packets by parading round in a puffy foil bodysuit. Thurl Ravenscroft (Grant) actually did provide you with the “Grrrrreeeat!” slogan for Frosted Flakes mascot Tony the Tiger. As he joked to the Orange County Register in 1996, “I am the one man on this planet that has made a profession with one phrase: Grrrrreeeat!” Schumer performs philanthropist and Submit government Marjorie Submit, depicted as so hungry for enterprise that she flies to Moscow to pitch cereal concepts to the Soviets. In actuality, she stepped down as Submit’s company director in 1958, six years earlier than the Pop-Tart got here out.

The Invoice Submit who helped create Pop-Tarts gained’t have the ability to see the Netflix movie, as he handed away on Feb. 10, on the age of 96. The filmmakers didn’t work with him on the movie, however Seinfeld’s Kellogg government character Bob Cabana is loosely primarily based on him. His identify was modified as a result of screenwriter Feresten thought having a personality named Submit working for Kellogg in a film about Kellogg and Submit feuding can be complicated for viewers.

Seinfeld and Feresten began writing what would turn into Unfrosted over Zoom after Hollywood productions stalled in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Feresten, whose favourite Pop-Tart is frosted blueberry, describes the movie to TIME as “a Seinfeld episode with a really huge finances.”

Pop-Tarts is probably not essentially the most healthful breakfast—they’re stuffed with extremely processed substances—however the film is pure, healthful enjoyable.