Pop-Tarts Parade 3 & Pretty Pork

It's weird, as popular as Pop-Tarts are there are certain places in the world where you virtually cannot get a Pop-Tart no matter what, they're not sold commercially. One such place is Australia where they've literally been entirely discontinued, no Pop-Tart is sold in Australia commercially and they can be found only in import shops, how much does that suck?

Introduced in 1964, over the decades Pop-Tarts have been endlessly re-released, re-branded and re-purposed. I've seen the flavour of blueberry and strawberry re-released under different names with barely any variation or no variation at all more times than I care to admit and each time I wonder 'Will this be the last time?' and then I realize how many times they've done it before and smack myself for being a moron and asking a stupid question.

Pop-Tarts were actually 'officially' introduced in 1967 when it was discovered they could make frosting that withstood the heat of a toaster-oven. Originally the flavours were only strawberry, blueberry, brown sugar cinnamon, and apple currant.

More history includes the fact that it wasn't until the 1990s that we discovered the intense flammability of Pop-Tarts which kind of lends to how awesome they are.. I know it's not necessarily a valued trait but anything that bursts into foot-high flames in your goddamn toaster is pretty fucking cool to me even if it does cause irreparable damage to the aforementioned appliance, your kitchen and possibly your eye brows. Who the fuck needs eye-brows anyway? Like you actually use them! Pssh.

Caramel Chocolate Pop-Tarts:

Okay I've got to state right to begin with, caramel and chocolate go together perfectly, they're an amazing combination that was clearly simply made to be. For all the flavours you couldn't possibly fuck up, caramel and chocolate seem like key-flavours. They just fit.

These things are goddamn yummy but they're a bit of a rarity in the sense that they're one of the only Pop-Tarts I've ever found that I prefer to be toasted and not just in a toaster, no. Forgo the normal appliance toaster and opt for your oven, trust me. If you're going to eat these, place them on a flat pan or sheet of tin-foil at 350 degrees for 5 minutes and you'll have something amazing. Do not however and I repeat do not forget them. You think appliance toaster Pop-Tarts are bad when they explode into foot-high flames? You've never fucking had a Pop-Tart oven fire-ball nearly take your ass out, then.

Chocotastic Pop-Tarts:

This was one of the stranger Pop-Tarts I've ever seen and you may be thinking to yourself or saying 'But Jade, they're chocolate Pop-Tarts. What's strange about that?', I'd answer by saying simply look down a list of Pop-Tart flavours. Where do we have just chocolate? It's always chocolate and some weird ass accompanying flavour, chocolate penicillin, chocolate mushroom or chocolate raepface, never just chocolate. I think there's a good reason for that...

Taste-wise these as I recall were sort of bland, I ate them 'raw' to begin with, untouched, uncooked, unfrozen and unmodified; removed from their inner-wrapper and gently nibbled upon in the way someone tasting something does obsessively nibble. They weren't good at all, that's for sure.. They were just.. So.. Under pronounced and the chocolate flavour was very weak leaving only the crusty, dry and largely unappealing pastry as the only thing I could really discern on my palette.. Frozen they weren't great either, they lacked that certain something that made them tasty and ended up just being hard and bland biscuits.. No, these things shine when they're heated and even then they don't 'shine' so much as they glisten slightly because the frosting has been heated up a little.

I would have really preferred chocolate penicillin.

Blueberry Muffin Pop-Tarts:

Man these are pretty and I don't really know why, maybe it's the fact that the pastry on the box looks so perfect and has this creamy thick looking goo-filling showing with those satisfyingly obvious blue-berry chunks and the deliciously crusted frosting with a buttery brown pastry? Maybe it's just the goddamn muffin on the side with the mutant blue blueberries which don't exist in nature because blueberries are actually more purple than blue and just don't naturally occur in that shade? Who knows..

In the seemingly endless line of fruit flavours and variations there on the Blueberry Muffin Pop-Tart comes as somewhat of a breath of fresh air. To be fair there's been Blueberry Frosted Pop-Tarts, Blueberry Unfrosted Pop-Tarts, Blueberry Fruit & Yogurt Pop-Tarts, Wildberry Pop-Tarts (Blueberry & Strawberry) and now Blueberry Muffin Pop-Tarts. Fuck me that's a lot of blueberry.

It's disappointing that these taste-wise aren't as delicious as the box makes them out to look to be. If you're expecting to bite into one of these and enjoy a blueberry muffin, well.. Go buy a fucking blueberry muffin, you're not getting it here.. These taste almost exactly like the normal and average blueberry Pop-Tarts though maybe a little more bland. If you want blueberry like I said, either get a muffin or just eat a damned blueberry Pop-Tart. These aren't worth it in my book. Quite disappointing.


Peanut Butter & Jelly Pop-Tarts:

These were discontinued, I don't know why. These were the greatest Pop-Tarts to ever exist and that's why they're getting a place on this list in spite of no longer being around. I do not care who you are, how much of a health-nut you may be or what you may think of Pop-Tarts, these were fucking delicious and if you had them when they were around during the late 1980s (they were introduced in 1986) and were around for a good bit after that.

THESE WERE THE GREATEST POP-TARTS EVER MADE, THE ABSOLUTE MOST DELICIOUS!!! I'm stating that again for the record and making it clear, these were divine. Featuring a thicker pastry than the Pop-Tarts you're used to today it was far more substantial and even seemed tastier than the Pop-Tart pastry is today (a little softer too if memory serves correctly), the inner-filling featuring a decadent peanut-butter frosting goo which just was yummy and accompanying it from the discontinued Grape Pop-Tart was a grape jelly goo which was divine along with the peanut-butter and all together teamed up into pure deliciousness.

Dear god these frozen.. Frozen these were a dessert and a half, add a little whipped creme, crush them up and mix it all together frozen and chilled and you've got THE most delicious dessert that's ever been conceived.

I'll never again have a bowl of whipped PB&J Pop-Tart though. :( As mentioned they've been discontinued for over a decade.. Pop-Tarts, what the hell? Why?

Dinner:

Behold the prettiness! Amai to butaniku choppuseibori (Sweet and Savoury Pork-Chop), this is a dish that took a lot of work and a lot of guessing. It's not just sweet but it's savoury too and let me tell you, accompanying sweet with savoury is not easy to do.

But I did it and the dish came out looking beautifully, a nice pan-cooked pork-chop with a Japanese Plum Wine savoury sauce that I made myself, mushita raisu to mame (Steamed Rice and Peas), a lemon Anpan (Sweet Roll), and Peppermint satsumaimomasshu (Sweet Potato Mash) - Not only did James motherfucking DEVOUR this like he was starving which means he loved it but it looked AWESOME and I can't complain at all about it's appearance which was just 100% perfect.

Look at that delicious looking bastard.