A Pop-Tart lives to be devoured.
Back at ACC media days in July, bowl representatives hung a watercolor painting of the Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tart, with its signature smile, ascending into mouth heaven. Frosted Strawberry prayer candles and a note of remembrance complemented the art, reminding attendees that Frosted Strawberry wanted this.
This: self-sacrifice in hopes of resurrecting as a sought-after sweet.
“Rest in pastry,” said Matt Repchak, Florida Citrus Sports’ chief marketing officer, who now hangs the picture in his Orlando office.
After last year’s inaugural Pop-Tarts Bowl, Frosted Strawberry lowered itself into an enormous faux toaster holding a sign that said, “Dreams really do come true!” A short time later, an oversized, edible Pop-Tart appeared out of the bottom of the toaster for the bowl champion Kansas State to devour.
The Wildcats also received a trophy shaped like a football, with two toaster-like slots inside to allow for the perfect Pop-Tart placement.
The trophy caught double takes as fans wondered if it doubled as an actual working toaster. It didn’t.
But it got the Pop-Tarts Bowl thinking. Could the next trophy actually toast pastries?
“Are you serious?” Rick Suel, the director of engineering at FirstBuild, a GE-owned innovation center, said when the bowl first approached him. “The answer was yes.”
The Pop-Tarts Bowl unveiled its creation Sunday night. The trophy to be won by either Iowa State or Miami (Fla.) on Dec. 28 will be a fully functional toaster, able to be plugged into the wall to make Pop-Tarts — or other items, if one dares — crispy and warm.
In an era of college football where bowl sponsors are constantly looking to top the absurdity of past years — from Cheez-It baths, to mayo baths … to eggnog baths — a trophy that also stands as a kitchen appliance is a college football novelty.
“If you’re going to put a toaster on a trophy, you can take that straight off the shelves at GE and smack it on the top of our base. But that isn’t quite what we asked for,” Repchak said. “It’s not just can you put a toaster on a trophy, it’s can you put a toaster inside a metal football on a trophy.”
The trophy toaster came together in 12 working days after Pop-Tarts and Florida Citrus Sports approached Suel’s team in November.
The group took 300 pounds of raw aluminum and machined it down into two 27-pound trophies — one main and one backup — over 60 hours. The trophies were then polished for 16 hours, starting with 200-grit sandpaper and ending with 5,000-grit. The team then finished them off with a liquid and hand polish. The metal football topper, where the main toaster function lies, is roughly 1.3 times the size of an actual football.
The super-cool is not to be mistaken for the supernatural. The trophy, at its core, is still a toaster. GE Appliances decided against a battery, so it needs to be plugged into an electrical outlet somewhere near the stage, which will be located in the middle of the football field on the 25-yard line. Repchak said the bowl is considering running power all the way to the trophy or using a generator. The trophy must also be operated at a proper moisture level, meaning the Florida weather holds the dream of a ceremonial toasting in its winds.
The trophy will be on the field one way or another, electrified or not, Repchak said. Where it is kept during the game — on the sideline or inside — and whether it remains under tents for the duration of the festivities is up to the weather. Regardless, Suel said the trophy will be run through a GFCI plug, so the teams “absolutely don’t anticipate” any hazards with the trophy, including players or coaches getting electrically shocked. A GFCI plug, short for ground-fault circuit interrupter, is designed to quickly shut off if it detects a ground fault to protect from electrocution.
“If you can still do that toaster moment postgame that’s going to be a really important and iconic part of Pop-Tarts Bowl lore,” Repchak said.
It could be the most anticipated 90 seconds this college football season, from the moment the trophy lever is pushed down to when the pastries pop up, sans the sound effects.
“It’s such a small movement when you think about it in a stadium of these little Pop-Tarts popping up. But it is that moment, the anticipation, the pop,” GE brand manager Natalie Benoit said.
“You don’t really know when it’s coming, so that part will be really fun.”
In another new, fan-requested twist, the bowl MVP of the Miami-Iowa State matchup will pick one of three edible mascots — Frosted Cinnamon Roll, Frosted Hot Fudge Sundae and Frosted Wild Berry — to toast and eat from the trophy during the postgame ceremony.
The winning team then gets to take the hardware back to campus and decide whether to use it as an appliance or decoration.
https://t.co/hX6Qd65Y7K pic.twitter.com/PMSYGHPuln
— Pop-Tarts Bowl (@PopTartsBowl) December 14, 2024
The Pop-Tarts Bowl was born as the Blockbuster Bowl in 1990 and went through 10 sponsor changes before it became pastry-centric last year. In the first Pop-Tarts Bowl, Kansas State ousted NC State 28-19 in front of a crowd of about 31,000 fans but garnered millions of impressions online with the postgame pageantry led by Frosted Strawberry.
Year 2 of the bowl gives fans the toaster trophy they asked for. In the future, no bowl request — a dancing Pop-Tarts flash mob or the world’s largest working toaster — will go unconsidered.
“Let’s unleash the spectacle of college football and Pop-Tarts combined,” Repchak said. “For the future, it’s where the fans want us to go next.”
And in the immediate days to come, fans just might reencounter a familiar face.
“We’re not necessarily done with Frosted Strawberry,” Repchak said. “People who come to this year’s game that maybe came to last year’s game still need the opportunity to pay tribute and so we’re going to look at what we can do at the fan areas outside the stadium, inside the stadium to maybe pay tribute to our edible mascot in mouth heaven before this year’s chosen flavor joins them.”
(Photo: Pop-Tarts Bowl)
