A Pop Tart® is a brand of fruit filled pastries sold by the Kellogg Company. A Pop Tart® is flat and rectangular, roughly 3 inches by 5 inches (7 cm by 13 cm). Each Pop Tart® consists of a shell of dough with a sugary filling on the inside. Many varieties of Pop Tarts® are frosted. A Pop Tart® is supposed to be heated in a toaster before consumption, but this is not necessary; many individuals prefer to eat them cold.
Pop Tarts® are the Kellogg Company's most popular product with over 2 billion sold each year. This popularity has lead to branding in many instances, with the name Pop Tart® commonly referring to any fruit filled breakfast pastry. The Pop Tart® is most popular in North America and the UK although they are available for purchase in almost all countries.
The list of Pop Tart® flavors is nearly endless. Most are fruit-based flavors, such as strawberry, wild berry, cherry, blueberry, and doubleberry. Other flavors are more candy-based, such as s'mores, hot fudge sundae, hot chocolate, double chocolate, and mint chocolate chip. In addition, there are flavors that fit somewhere between the two aforementioned categories, such as strawberry danish, brown sugar cinnamon, apple strudel, and strawberry milkshake.
The Kellogg Company first began production of Pop Tarts® in the 1960s. Four original flavors of Pop Tarts® were introduced to the market: strawberry, brown sugar-cinnamon, apple currant, and blueberry. Soon after the debut of Pop Tarts®, they were popular enough that many grocery stores had trouble keeping the item in stock. Pop Tarts® were originally not frosted, however soon after the introduction of the popular breakfast pastry frosting became the norm.
The Pop Tart® brand name has appeared on several different products. For a short time, Pop Tarts® cereal was sold, although it was no where near as successful as the original product. A mobile variation of the original Pop Tart® design has been created, called Go-Tarts®. Instead of being square and flat, Go-Tarts® are narrow tubes, designed to be more portable than the rectangular counterparts.
The Kellogg Company has been the target of several lawsuits because of Pop Tarts®. This is due to the fact that, when Pop Tarts® are left in a toaster for too long, they have a tendency to burst into flame. In response to these lawsuits, and to prevent further litigation, a warning was placed on the packaging of Pop Tarts® which states that one should not leave the toaster unattended when heating the product.