Pop Tart Pandemonium: By Bill Mathews

Pop Tart Pandemonium 

Most people know that pop tarts aren't a crucial component of the balanced breakfast, or really great for your diet in anyway, shape, or form, but what they are is delicious. I chose to survey this tasty childhood treat by putting some of the best flavors of pop tarts head to head in a pastry battle royale. I hand picked three flavors that I thought would make solid competitors. 

Contender number one was the classic brown sugar cinnamon. 

My first impression of the toaster pastry when I peeled off the plastic packaging was that it was very bland, dull, and boring.

 It had a rough light brown complexion with a flaky uninviting crust. It did not look appetizing at all. I then proceeded to bend it in half to see what kind of action it had going on inside of the not so impressive outer shell, and I was wasn't really impressed. I mean it had a little more texture than I was expecting but this was no Toaster Strudle. Before indulging I decided to take a look at the nutrition facts, and what I found was borderline disturbing. Even though the Pop Tarts come packaged with 2 pastries the serving size is for only one. I don know who in their right mind would only eat on Pop Tart and save the other for a rainy day so when i present the following information it will already be doubled implying that both pastries were consumed. The first one that struck me was the calories, and the brown sugar pop tarts contained 420 of them. This would mean assuming you are eating the recommended 2000 calories per day, that these pastries would equate to over 1/5 of your daily allotted amount. Other ginormous red flags were the 70g of carbs, 14g of fat, and an alarming 30g of sugar. After taking in the disturbing nutrition fact i decided to dig in. After the below average evaluation I made on the appearance of the pastry the taste was a pleasant surprise. The crust was pretty dry and awful, but the frosting, and filling made up for it by being smooth and delicious. Overall the taste was pretty impressive.

I then moved onto the strawberry flavored pop tart.

My initial impression of the strawberry pastry was somewhat better than the brown sugar. The frosting looked more inviting and flavorful than the bland brown sugar. When I cracked the strawberry pastry open I was greeted with basically the identical consistency as the brown sugar flavor. 

As far as nutrition goes the strawberry has slightly less calories, coming in at 400 even. It does however have more carbs, and sugar with 76g and 32g respectively. Although the visuals were quite a bit better than the brown sugar pop tart the taste didn't even come close. It was dry and flaky. The innards and the frosting were decent but still fell short of the brown sugar.

I tried to save what I thought would be the best for last, considering I am a chocolate fanatic. I had high hopes for the chocolate fudge pop tarts. 

My initial thoughts on the chocolate fudge pastry were better than both the brown sugar, and strawberry flavors. This may be because of my pre conceived obsession with chocolate, or because the chocolate crust didn't look as awful. I then moved on to the inside, because it does not matter whats on the outside it is what is on the inside that counts. 

The inside also blew away the rest of the field, since it actually was somewhat liquid if that makes sense. It seemed to cascade out of the pastry in a beautiful way. As far as nutrition goes it was again pretty similar, they contain an unpleasant 400 calories per pack. The carbs were slightly less than strawberry sitting at 74g, while the sugar was the highest yet coming in at 38g! When I went for the taste test i obviously had high hopes, but they were let down big time when I sunk my teeth into the pastry. It definitely wasn't awful, but it was on about the same level as the brown sugar and I was just expecting more from my visual evaluation.

Overall evaluation of the pop tart battle royale. 

First impression: Brown sugar-2/5

                            Strawberry-3/5

                            Chocolate fudge-4/5

Inside visuals: Brown sugar-2/5

                        Strawberry-2/5

                        Chocolate fudge-4/5

Taste: Brown sugar-4/5

           Strawberry-2/5

          Chocolate fudge-3/5

Nutrition: Brown sugar-1/5

                 Strawberry-1/5

                 Chocolate fudge-1/5

Overall: Brown sugar-1st

              Chocolate fudge-2nd

              Strawberry-3rd

         

When it comes down to it the chocolate fudge pastry basically blew away the competition and takes first place in the contest and in my heart. Brown sugar regretfully takes second since even though it tasted the best, its visuals were well below par. The obvious loser is strawberry since it tasted pretty awful and score low in all categories. I didn't take nutrition into effect while rating them since they were all basically equally terrible.