In 2023, Pop-Tarts modified the world of name mascots ceaselessly when it sacrificed the lifetime of a Strawberry Pop-Tart and fed its stays to the Kansas State soccer crew as a reward for profitable the Pop-Tarts Bowl recreation. The weirdly macabre stunt received 4 billion media impressions, and within the eight weeks following the sport, guardian firm Kellanova bought 21 million extra Pop-Tarts than within the eight weeks earlier than the sport.
Using on that success, the model upped its ambitions and introduced three flavors to the Pop-Tarts Bowl final 12 months, letting the profitable crew’s MVP select which one was toasted and eaten (Iowa State’s quarterback, Rocco Becht, picked Frosted Cinnamon Roll). Now Pop-Tarts has introduced that it’s dramatically increasing its “edible mascot” lineup for the subsequent large recreation, scheduled to be performed in Orlando’s Tenting World Stadium on December twenty seventh.
Six edible Pop-Tarts mascots—three on Workforce Sprinkles and three on Workforce Swirls—will likely be up for mass consumption, with followers voting forward of time on which crew ought to be sacrificed.
For Pop-Tarts, it’s a major leap in each sacrificial anthropomorphic breakfast pastry and the stakes for its model stunt technique. Many viewers will undoubtedly be giddy on the prospect of doubling the variety of mascots concerned, however there’s a value to escalating the premise so much in such a short period of time: Pop-Tarts is now coming into into an pointless arms race with itself.
Once I posed this idea to the model’s VP of marketing, Leslie Serro, she didn’t agree. “Increasing from three to 6 edible mascots this 12 months isn’t about an arms race; it’s about evolution,” she says. Serro tells me that they concluded after final 12 months’s success that followers have an “insatiable urge for food for the playful and surprising nature of the Pop-Tarts Bowl.” Thus, the doubling down from three to 6 mascots and “elevating the stakes.”
To be truthful, will I be searching for social clips from the sport on the twenty seventh, in that lifeless zone between Christmas and New Yr’s? Positive. Serro’s received me there. However will I really feel as sick as if I ate six Pop-Tarts reasonably than only one (and even three)? Sure.
Let me clarify why Pop-Tarts, which so brilliantly spoke to the tradition two years in the past, dangers toasting all that goodwill.
Mascot Energy
It’s straightforward to see why Pop-Tarts would wish to crank up the mascot machine and get much more model characters into the sport (albeit to kill and eat them). A 2021 whitepaper by the Moving Picture Council discovered that long-term campaigns that includes a personality elevated market share 39.2%, in contrast with 29.7% for campaigns with out a character; it additionally boosted revenue acquire 34.2% (versus 29.7%).
A report by System1 discovered that 2025 Tremendous Bowl adverts with model characters carried out higher than these that includes celebrities. For instance, an M&M’s 2023 Tremendous Bowl spot starring Maya Rudolph underperformed as a result of folks didn’t make the connection between Rudolph and the model. As a celeb, she might’ve been promoting something. Scores then soared as soon as the M&M’s characters returned in a second spot. Mascots aren’t simply cute and enjoyable. They create a quicker path to being memorable, and being memorable tends to straight affect what we purchase.
Two key components in any profitable mascot are longevity and consistency. Simply take into consideration the lifespan of among the most iconic mascots: The Michelin Man was created in 1898! Tony the Tiger was born in 1952. Mr. Clear’s mascot got here round in 1957. Chester Cheetah of Cheetos fame first dropped in 1986. And the Energizer Bunny began banging that drum in 1989. Each the Aflac Duck and Geico’s Gecko have been flogging insurance coverage since 1999. Even Duolingo’s Duo, usually thought-about a new-wave TikTok darling model mascot, has been round since 2011. These are model belongings constructed for the lengthy recreation.
Pop-Tarts is trying to do one thing related. Six months earlier than the 2023 Pop-Tarts Bowl, the model unveiled its new solid of characters, the “Brokers of Loopy Good,” as an replace to characters from its “Loopy Good” adverts of the early ’00s. The Brokers had been described as “representations of the beloved toaster pastries dropped at life, together with Frosted Strawberry, Brown Sugar Cinnamon, Sizzling Fudge Sundae, and a squad of Bites. The ingenious crew come absolutely frosted and able to problem expectations for the place the model can present up subsequent.”
Funnily sufficient, in tying the Brokers again to the “Loopy Good” doodle characters from 20 years in the past, Pop-Tarts is no less than making an attempt to conjure a brand new historical past of consistency. (Aspect be aware: Deliver these adverts again!)
Past Breakfast
The unique aim of introducing Pop-Tarts as edible mascots, and even sponsoring the school bowl recreation within the first place, was to develop our buy intention past breakfast and into the remainder of the day. To go from breakfast to snack. The model noticed faculty soccer as the proper automobile to take that message.
The edible mascot happened because the model knew it needed to cope with a laundry record of branded Faculty Bowl video games, every with their very own model mascot gimmick (Duke’s Mayo dumping mayonnaise on the profitable coach, or Kellanova sibling Cheez-It’s mascot Ched-Z officiating a marriage throughout a recreation time-out).
In response to Serro, final 12 months’s Pop-Tarts Bowl drove 9 instances extra share of voice than 20 different non-Kellanova Bowl video games mixed, a 275% enhance in social engagements versus 2023, and the very best model search in additional than 15 years on recreation day. The model additionally bought tens of millions extra Pop-Tarts within the month following the sport than the month earlier than it.
The model might have caught with the only edible mascot for just a few years, then slowly, methodically, 12 months after 12 months, began including extra characters and ideas. In my view, this could construct extra familiarity, anticipation, and, by extension, enthusiasm.
However the place can we go from right here? If it’s 6 edible mascots this 12 months, can we leap to 10 or 12 in 2026? When will the numbers recreation stop? Perhaps it goes full Bud Bowl, and now we have two full soccer squads of Pop-Tarts on the sector enjoying for the precise to be enthusiastically toasted and devoured. Wonderful.
To be clear, I really like this concept, and it’s a main instance of a marketer cleverly discovering “white area” in a saturated advertising and marketing panorama and eventizing one thing, seemingly out of nothing. In that approach, it’s kindred to FanDuel’s “Kick of Destiny” work within the final three Tremendous Bowls. It additionally turned issues up a notch, going from Rob Gronkowski as a single kicker throughout a reside industrial break to Peyton and Eli Manning dealing with off in a particular pregame present. Each 2024 and 2025 attracted about 2 million members on FanDuel, so the evolution seems to have labored.
With Pop-Tarts, the edible mascot barely turned a convention earlier than it was hurriedly super-sized and multiplied. Because of this, Pop-Tarts could have simply bitten years off the gimmick’s lifespan by so shortly feeding into our tradition’s insatiable urge for food for newer, greater, now now now. It’s a mirrored image of a broader subject in model tradition, the place entrepreneurs are churning by way of concepts so shortly that nothing is given the time to grow to be really iconic.
It’s additionally doable the model must money in its Bowl hype on a brief timeline, given it signed a one-year title sponsorship deal for 2023, then exercised its two-year extension possibility final 12 months. Serro wouldn’t present particulars on whether or not the model will lengthen its Bowl funding past this 12 months. “Whereas we are able to’t share a lot simply but, let’s simply say we love soccer and the best way it brings followers collectively,” she says.
However based mostly on its recognition to date, and in the event that they play their breakfast pastry playing cards proper, the horizon for edible mascots might be extremely lengthy. They may star in adverts, after which dip into actual life as pop-culture nomads, exhibiting up at any given extravaganza—state gala’s, film premieres, music festivals, the Tremendous Bowl—till the tip of time. Let’s face it, with a yearslong legacy like that, the folks would . . . ahem . . . eat it up, and we’d have the Energizer Bunny of deliciously suicidal model mascots.
