REVIEW: Limited Edition Frosted Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts

The Limited Edition Frosted Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts are one of the few Pop-Tarts flavors that make sense, unlike any Pop-Tarts flavor that include the words “creme” or “milkshake.”

The Pop-Tarts’ crust represents the crust of the pie. The orange pumpkin filling represents the pumpkin in the pie. The white frosting represents the whipped cream dollop on top of the pie. And the fall-colored sprinkles represent excessive Thanksgiving feasting. Because just like getting up for a third helping of turkey and gravy, they’re completely unnecessary and probably aren’t good for you.

Seriously, I’ve never seen anyone put sprinkles on a pumpkin pie’s whipped cream dollop. Sprinkles over the frosting on top of a cupcake…yes. Sprinkles on top of a banana split…yes. Sprinkles dumped into my mouth so I can spit out rainbows…yes. Sprinkles to represent clown pubic hair stubble on a whipped cream bikini bottom…yes. But never on top of whipped cream on a pumpkin pie.

Despite the use of sprinkles, Kellogg’s was able to produce a Pop-Tarts filling that tastes like pumpkin pie, thanks to the use of pumpkin, cinnamon, high fructose corn syrup and, possibly, Black Magic. To be honest, it’s really scary they were able to do so, since most Pop-Tarts don’t really taste like the flavor they’re attempting to emulate.

But I guess that’s just the power of Black Magic.

Because of its familiar pumpkin pie flavor, I have to say I enjoyed the Limited Edition Frosted Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts, and they’re definitely somewhere on my Top 10 List of Favorite Pop-Tarts Flavors. It’s too bad they’re a limited edition, but I hope they bring them back next Fall — without the unnecessary sprinkles.

But if you do happen to get your hands on a box or two of the Limited Edition Frosted Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts, might I suggest sharing them with friends, just like the Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians shared fowl, beans, nuts and communicable diseases during the first Thanksgiving.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 pastry/50 grams – 200 calories, 45 grams from fat, 5 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 2 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 1 gram of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 170 milligrams of sodium, 35 grams of carbohydrates, less that 1 gram of fiber, 16 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein and a bunch of vitamins and minerals.)

(NOTE: Thanks to Roddy from Rodzilla Reviews for mailing me a box.)

Other Frosted Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts reviews:
Rodzilla Reviews
Cookie Madness
Junk Food Betty

Item: Limited Edition Frosted Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts
Price: $3.50
Size: 12 pastries
Purchased at: Giant Eagle
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Pop-Tarts filling tastes like pumpkin pie. One of my top 10 favorite Pop-Tarts. Using Black Magic to create Pop-Tarts. One of the few Pop-Tarts that tastes like what its emulating. Decent source of vitamins and minerals. Comes in a 12 count box. Spitting out rainbows.
Cons: Sprinkles were unnecessary. High fructose corn syrup. Limited edition flavor. Hard to find. Using Black Magic for evil. Communicable diseases. A third helping of Thanksgiving dinner. Clown pubic hair stubble.

NEWS: Limited Edition Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts Could Help Create The Saddest Thanksgiving Meal Ever

Read our review of Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts here

When combined with a convenience store turkey sandwich, Ocean Spray cranberry juice and mashed potatoes with gravy from KFC, the Limited Edition Frosted Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts could be the dessert that ends the most depressing Thanksgiving meal ever. Or if the Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts are still around in December, they could end the most depressing Christmas meal ever.

The latest Pop-Tarts flavor is made up of white dough with pumpkin pie filling (yes, pumpkin is listed in the ingredients list) and is topped with white frosting and fall-colored sprinkles. It will only be available in a 12-count box.

One pastry contains 200 calories, 5 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 2 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 1 gram of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 170 milligrams of sodium, 35 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 16 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein and a bunch of vitamins and minerals.

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REVIEW: Kellogg’s Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola

The Kellogg’s Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola was inevitable, which is unfortunate. If you break it down, you’ve got two food innovations (I use the term semi-sarcastically) that came together in a perfect storm of potential horror.

On the one hand, you’ve got the gourmet pizza movement, which cropped up a few decades ago. Based entirely on shit someone told me with no empirical evidence, Wolfgang Puck made the first gourmet pizza, so you can blame him for shit like cream cheese smoked salmon pizza and foie gras pizza and god knows what else. I also blame, again, with very little evidence, California Pizza Kitchen for bringing gourmet pizza to the masses, with creations like cheeseburger pizza and Pear & Gorgonzola pizza. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some gourmet pizza and non-traditional toppings. One of the little local pizza joints in my town has a $10 large unlimited topping offer that I abuse on a regular basis to create my own monstrosities. White pizza with a butter parmesan crust with double green olives, feta, onion, tomatoes and artichoke hearts, anyone? I wouldn’t be surprised if they take that deal off the table because I’m single-handedly putting them out of business.

The other part of this equation is the recent explosion of breakfast frozen food products. I don’t know when this started – maybe it’s been around for quite a while and I just never noticed – but I seem to remember a time when, if you wanted a breakfast frozen food, you grabbed yourself a box of Eggo waffles and shut the fuck up about it. Now you’ve got crazy options, from sausage Mcmuffins to bowls with all your shit thrown together to…whatever in God’s name this is.

My point, quite obviously by now, is that Eggo took these two concepts, herded them into a small pen, watched them do the nasty, and what came out a couple minutes later (food gestates quickly) was the Eggo Real Fruit Pizza. They wiped off the amniotic maple syrup and disgusting globs of strawberry jam and said, “I think we’ve got something here.” Kind of like how my friends think their newborn babies are cute, and I think they look like horrible aliens.

I hadn’t noticed this before, but there’s a strange purple sauce-like substance underneath the toppings. Ugh, is that supposed to be yogurt? I am not looking forward to having hot yogurt in my mouth. I’m also not comfortable with that sentence.

The instructions are simple: unwrap the pizza, flip the box over that it was resting in, set it on the silver circle on the back of the container, and throw it in the microwave for a minute to 1 1/2 minutes. I split the difference, and stuck it in there for 1 1/4 minutes. It was still a little cold in the middle, so I stuck it in for the extra 15, but my microwave is also a piece of shit, so bare that in mind. Waiting a minute and a half for a quick breakfast when you’re on the go is a little impressive. It takes me longer to smear cream cheese on a bagel. I have some pretty strict rules about cream cheese.

It actually smells pretty good coming out of the microwave. It smells like a bowl of oatmeal that has berries and granola in it – warm and inviting, something you’d want to eat on a cold, snowy day. Unfortunately it’s 106 and humid right now where I live, but I’ll close my eyes and use my imagination.

There’s obviously blueberries going on, scattered about the top of the pizza, shriveled up as they tend to do when cooked. They’re distributed nicely, but I would have liked to have seen a few more of them.

I don’t see any other recognizable berries, but there’s some red glop haphazardly strewn over the top. I took some off and tasted it by itself, and it tastes like they took some raspberries and turned them into a puree. It’s definitely real raspberries; it’s got that delicious tartness of the berry and I even got some seeds stuck in my teeth, which is the one thing that annoys me about raspberries. But I welcome them here, since they offer proof of real berry, unless Eggo spent millions of dollars attempting to create a facsimile of raspberry seeds to fool consumers. Probably a lot easier just to throw some berries in a blender and hold true to their claims of “real fruit.”

The dreaded yogurt sauce was nothing to fear after all. It’s very thin, and when I tasted it on its own, it had the faint flavor of mixed berry yogurt, but it was very mild and inoffensive. The granola is spread generously on one side of the pizza, but tapers out until there’s barely any on the other side.

I was truly surprised to see that the crust wasn’t actually a waffle. If I’d look more closely at the box, I might have figured it out, but my mind associates “Eggo” with “waffles” so decisively that I just assumed that would be the case. Instead, the dough of this “pizza” seems to be made out of wheat. It looks like a thin crust pizza crust, except darker. Unfortunately, it’s tasteless, soggy and way too chewy. I’m not even really sure what to call it. Wheat…pizza crust…thing. Except it tastes more like a bland PowerBar than a pizza crust.

There seem to be two fundamental problems with the Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola: sogginess and poor topping distribution. The crust and the granola were both way too soggy. Perhaps it would have turned out better if I’d cooked it in the oven, but if you’re eating fruit pizza for breakfast, you either don’t have time to wait for the oven to preheat, you’re a college student who doesn’t even own an oven or you’re young enough that you’re not allowed to use the oven.

As far as the toppings go, the mysterious purple sauce was thin to the point where in some places, you could see bare patches of crust. The raspberry puree, which I think is the best part of this item, is strewn halfheartedly across the pizza, globbed up in some places and simply nonexistent in others. The granola is piled high on one half the pizza, but peters out into scattered flakes.

I have to say, I expected this whole “fruit pizza” thing to be a horror show. Instead, it just left me disappointed. If done correctly, it would have been quite tasty. A less chewy, less soggy, more flavorful crust, coated thickly with the delicious raspberry puree, a generous layer of crispy granola, and piled high with blueberries, would have actually been something that I’d consider spending 1 1/2 minutes nuking in the morning for a quick breakfast. Unfortunately, that’s not what the Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola really is, so I think I’ll just stick with real pizza for breakfast. That box of double green olives, feta, and everything else pizza that’s been sitting out on the counter all night looks pretty good right now.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 individual-size pizza (5.3 ounces) — 390 calories, 110 calories from fat, 13 grams of total fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 3 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 2.5 grams of monounsaturated fat, 15 milligrams of cholesterol, 390 milligrams of sodium, , 62 grams of total carbohydrates, 4 grams of dietary fiber, 17 grams of sugars, 10 grams of protein, 0% vitamin A, 6% calcium, 0% vitamin C and 8% iron.)

Item: Kellogg’s Eggo Real Fruit Pizza Mixed Berry Granola
Price: $1.67 (on sale; normally $3.29)
Size: 1 individual-size pizza (5.3 ounces)
Purchased at: Albertson’s
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Raspberry puree was delicious. Taking advantage of unlimited topping deals. Quick and easy to make. Purple sauce was not scary.
Cons: Soggy, tasteless crust and soggy granola. “Hot yogurt in my mouth” making me uneasy. Uneven and sloppily applied toppings. Just the idea of fruit pizza making me shudder. 46 percent of total fat was saturated fat on what appears on the surface to be a healthy food item.