Last year, Strawberry, a giant, anthropomorphized Pop-Tarts pastry, had college football fans and the internet rapt in attention.
A mascot at the Dec. 28 Pop-Tarts Bowl where Kansas State faced North Carolina State in Orlando, Fla., Strawberry worked the crowd. At the end of the game, the pastry held a sign reading “Dreams really do come true” as it sank into a giant toaster and emerged as an edible form of itself, which was then devoured by the game’s victors. For many observers (many of them likely Gen Zers) who posted about the instantly iconic meme online, it summed up something about life in 2024.
The game drew 4.3 million viewers, the highest of any bowl game so far that year, and racked up an estimated $12.1 million in media exposure for Pop-Tarts. The 60-year-old brand, long a byword for rushed suburban breakfasts before school and a distinctly food-industrial complex of the ancient European form of strudel, had gained a new currency as a demented symbol of postmodernity.
Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, since Kellogg’s executive William LaMothe actually named the snack after the 1960s Pop Art movement. But what about William Post, the widely credited inventor of the iconic American snack, who just died on Saturday in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the age of 96?
In truth, William Post was an accidental inventor, and he graciously insisted throughout his life that his great creation was a team effort. And his start in the snack business came as a truck washer.
Who is William Post and how did he invent Pop-Tarts?
At the age of 16, the Grand Rapids native got his break in snacks washing trucks for Hekman Biscuit Company, which was later acquired by Keebler and then folded into the United Biscuit Company. But although Keebler and United Biscuit hailed by Philadelphia, the plant in Michigan was a hotbed of activity in the snacks world. For the truth is, Michigan had already been the center of American snacking for decades.
The snacks industry in general, and biscuits in particular, has an oddly deep history in Michigan, dating back to when Will Keith Kellogg founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company in 1906, whose corporate descendant—and producer of the pop tart—is now called Kellanova.
The roots of American snacking are strange and twisted. The Kellogg family were devout Seventh-Day Adventists from the Massachusetts area, and followed beliefs espoused by fellow New Englander Sylvester Graham (of Graham cracker fame) regarding the benefits of a bland vegetarian diet. John Harvey Kellogg, Will Keith’s brother, was the superintendent of Battle Creek Sanitorium, which served patients a bland diet of corn flakes. In the same town of Battle Creek, C.W. Post, sharing the philosophy of the Kellogg brothers, began producing Postum, a cereal beverage in 1895. Food historians consider Graham (who was also a vegetarian) the first food faddist, and therefore he holds a strong claim to be the spiritual grandfather of the Pop Tart.
Post and his fellow truck washers were “poor as church mice bringing money home for my folks,” he said in a later interview with Kellanova, and he worked his way up over years to the position of plant manager. He was in that job when he fielded a call from Kellogg’s, saying they wanted to create something for the toaster, “but they didn’t know how to do it,” Post told a Grand Rapids television station in 2021. Kellogg’s wanted to create a product to compete with Country Squares, a breakfast pastry that was getting ready to launch from Post (not to be confused with William Post himself).
Four Kellogg’s executives visited Post (the man) to show him their prototype of a pielike pastry with “fork marks around the edge — two pieces of dough with some filling in it.”
It took a few months for Post and his team to figure out how to make the iconic Pop Tarts—mostly because of the heavy machinery that would be involved in baking them. Crafting this confection would require a 60-ton piece of equipment, and “guys at the bakery thought that was crazy,” Post said in the News Channel 3 interview.
But after Post and his team nailed down the process, some of the first people to test the product were Post’s children, 9 and 13 years old at the time. The product was first called a “Fruit Scone,” but its lasting name was a nod to the pop culture movement of the time, according to Pop Tarts brand history.
The Pop-Tarts officially launched in Cleveland, Ohio in 1964 with four flavors: strawberry, blueberry, brown sugar cinnamon, and apple currant. The product was an immediate success, and was scaled from 10,000 to 45,000 cases to keep up with rising demand.
A year later, Pop-Tarts started selling nationwide, but it wasn’t until 1967 that the brand introduced their frosted offerings because it took a while to develop a topping that wouldn’t melt in the toaster oven.
Although Post is dubbed as Pop-Tarts’ official inventor with an estimated net worth of about $8 million, he shied away from taking all the credit.
“Bill would say, ‘I assembled an amazing team that developed Kellogg’s concept of a shelf-stable toaster pastry into a fine product that we could bring to market in the span of just four months,’” his family’s obituary said.
Post enjoyed Pop-Tarts well into his 90s. He preferred strawberry, the brand’s original flavor, and always kept sleeves of the pastry in his car.
“We have a seniors group at church and you have to bring your lunch every once in a while. I always bring my Pop Tarts and of course they all think, ‘Poor guy, that’s all he can eat,'” Post News Channel 3 in 2022. “But I just like to have them as a snack.”
