Pop-Tart Taste Tester? Who knew?

It doesn't seem like the type of item my mother would have fallen for. She was a scratch cook and baker, and a big believer in a hearty breakfast. Sure, sometimes we had dry cereal with fruit, but mostly it was bacon and eggs, pancakes and bacon, oatmeal with raisins. 

Plus my mother never fell for advertising. Nor did she ever fall for her kids begging and whining for something we'd seen advertised. Pffftttt to that. So what if Buffalo Bob Smith wanted us to buy something? So what if everyone else in Worcester had their hands and greedy little mouths on something?We were not, as my parents repeatedly reminded us, not everyone else. 

But she did, on occasion, buy Pop-Tarts.

Pop-Tarts came out in 1964, when I was in high school, and I remember loving them. 

I'm pretty sure the flavor was strawberry, and while the filling tasted nothing like strawberry, I thought they were just delish. 

It was even worth burning your tongue on when they popped out of the toaster and you took that first luscious, 'licious bite.  

Maybe I bought them when I was in college, but I have zero recall of actually going to a grocery store and throwing a package of Pop-Tarts in my cart. So I didn't like them all that much.

And now it's been decades since I had a Pop-Tart. And when last I had one, I came away with the realization that it tasted like a thin cardboard sandwich with some sort of non-descript sweet paste filling. 

Anyway, as I learned from an article I saw a few weeks back in the New York Times, despite my non-patronage, Pop-Tarts have managed to stay the course. Next year, Kellogg's will celebrate their 60th anniversary. And last year, despite my non-patronage:

...more than two billion were sold, according to the company. They’ve been depicted on art murals, exhibited in museums and parodied on “Saturday Night Live.” (Source: NY Times)

The article was written by Laura Holson and, while she did include a bit of Pop-Tart history - including the gem that Kellogg's had considered calling them "fruit scones" - her primary focus was on her family's experience as Pop-Tart taste testers.

There are, of course, taste testers for everything. 

It's just that you never think of it as something that a family would participate in. Oh, I guess it makes more sense than having a bunch of quasi-scientists in white coats munching and crunching, and jotting their observations on clipboards. Having a family try a foodstuff aimed squarely at kids sure makes sense. And if you're going to have a taste-tester family, why not one with eight kids, which the Holsons had. 

Holson has no idea how her family was chosen. She was just a kindergartner the year her family was enlisted to try out new flavors. She surmises that her mother answered an ad, figuring it would help her out with the food bills. 

To me and my siblings, Pop-Tarts were exotic. We were raised in a small agricultural community in the shadow of California’s Santa Cruz Mountains and got most of our food from the farms and dairies that dotted the outskirts of town. Processed food was rare in our house, and store-bought sweets rarer still, as it was cheaper to bake dozens of homemade cookies on a Sunday to be divvied up during the week.

Sounds familiar, other than that my mother baked almost every day, not just on Sundays. And we were in Worcester, not the Santa Cruz Mountains.  

The Pop-Tarts were delivered to our door in a cardboard box about the size of a footstool, with nothing on the outside to indicate flavor, frosting or even that it was from Kellogg’s. The individual packages inside were marked with only a number.

...One sister recalls that our father locked the Pop-Tarts in the basement for safekeeping. This makes sense. Food left unattended in a big family tends to disappear quickly, and my parents guarded the Pop-Tarts the way Harry Winston watches over its diamonds on Oscar night.

...On tasting nights [the Holsons didn't treat them as a breakfast food]. we would gather around the kitchen table after dinner. Then my father would appear with the box of Pop-Tarts and place it gently on the counter with the same care he laid baby Jesus in the crèche on Christmas Eve. My mother would tear open the bags and dole out one Pop-Tart apiece. She did not toast them (which is kind of the point, isn’t it?), and the flavor was kept secret until the big reveal.

After every did that taste test, their mother would ask them questions about their reactions, and then the kids would fill out forms, giving the Pop-Tarts grades for attributes like taste and texture. 

We were good students and took our job seriously, considering our appraisals with the same thoughtfulness as a “Top Chef” judge. In our minds, at least, this was important work. I may be exaggerating here, but if you like Frosted Strawberry or Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon — two of Kellogg’s best-selling flavors — you may have our family to thank.

It's interesting to note that none of the Holson sibs are current Pop-Tart eaters. Growing up will do that to you. 

Me? I would have been thrilled if our family had been Pop-Tart taste testers, or taste testers for other items, as long as it wasn't something yucky like creamed corn. And ultra-proud. I was even proud when I read that WORC, Worcester's rock 'n roll station, was often the test market for new records, as "our" teenagers were apparently a good proxy for kids nationwide. It's claimed that WORC was the first station to play a Beatles song. (Snob that I was/am, by the time I was in high school, I had graduated from listening to WORC to tuning into WBZ in Boston, the Top 40 station that was considered cooler and more sophisticated than anything in Worcester. 

The only family I knew of who came close to the Pop-Tart tasters was that of a guy I used to work with. His mother was a location finder for an advertising agency, and his family's kitchen was used for some of the Jell-o pudding ads with Bill Cosby. 

But Pop-Tart taste tester? Who knew?