Jerry Seinfeld Thawed, The feature film about the fierce race to create the Pop-Tarts toaster begins streaming today (May 3) on Netflix. In his directorial debut, Seinfeld also stars as Kellogg’s head of development, facing off against cereal mascots and milkmen up in arms because they fear a breakfast that doesn’t require milk will put them out of business.
The film, which also stars Hugh Grant and Amy Schumer, took more than a decade to produce. Seinfeld and Thawed screenwriter Spike Feresten, a Seinfeld writer, joked about making a movie based on the comedian’s favorite breakfast as early as 2013. But then came the COVID-19 pandemic, when Seinfeld had to stop doing stand-up, and he and Feresten tried to turn the inside joke into a film for the outside world. Both writers found the children’s cereal business inherently hilarious, Feresten told TIME, imagining “serious men in suits inventing silly things for children.”
Although the film is a total farce, it is based on the historical rivalry between America’s largest breakfast cereal manufacturers. Kellogg and Post were founded in Battle Creek, Michigan, and had a long history of competing with each other. In the early 1900s, C.W. Post stole a Kellogg cornflake recipe, which he dubbed “post-toast.” Howard Markel, a historian who wrote a book about Kellogg, describes the companies to TIME as always “fighting like cats and dogs, like Ford and General Motors.”
A Space Race for Breakfast Foods
Fast forward to the 1960s, when Post and Kellogg were competing to simultaneously develop a toaster breakfast food. The film compares the race to the space race, with Kellogg introducing his “flavor pilots” as if they were NASA astronauts. In fact, Post had announced that his “Country Squares” were in the works, wrapped in foil, but Kellogg beat them to market in 1964.
The key ingredient to Kellogg’s Pop-Tart success was the 1963 recruitment of Bill Post, who managed a Hekman (later Keebler Food Co.) factory in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Post took home some Pop-Tart prototypes for his kids, and they were a hit. His children “used to ask me, ‘Bring home those fruit muffins,’” he said. counted the Associated Press in 2003. “That’s what we called them at first, internally. Fruit muffins. ‘Bring some of these home, please, Dad?'” In the film, children play a key role as taste testers: Seinfeld discovers children eating leftovers from Post’s trash can.
Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts were a hit in a test market in Cleveland in late 1963. The following year, Kellogg immediately sold out of the original four flavors—strawberry, blueberry, currant, apple, and brown sugar cinnamon. Kellogg’s added topping in 1967 and then sprinkles in 1968, at Post’s suggestion. Now, Pop-Tarts come in more than two dozen flavors, and factories produce about 7 million Pop-Tarts a day. At one point, Bill Post drove a car with a personalized license plate that said “Pop Tart.”
Pop-Tarts were a product of their moment. The Pop-Tarts website says the name — coined by Kellogg executive William LaMothe — is a play on the popular Pop-Art movement of the 1960s. And as women rose through the professional ranks, empowered by the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, they needed a breakfast that their children could eat quickly, according to Heather Arndt Anderson Breakfast: A History.
Tony the tiger
Several characters in the film are fictional versions of real people. Jack LaLanne, a Kellogg tasting pilot played by James Marsden, pioneered at-home workouts, and in the film he inspires foil packets of Pop-Tarts by parading around in a cute foil onesie. Thurl Ravenscroft (Grant) actually invented the “Grrrrreeeat!” slogan of the Frosted Flakes mascot, Tony the Tiger. How he played with Orange County Record in 1996, “I’m the only man in the world who has made a career out of one word: Grrrrreeeat!” Schumer plays philanthropist and Post executive Marjorie Post, portrayed as so business-hungry that she flies to Moscow to pitch cereal ideas to the Soviets. In fact, she stepped down as the Post’s corporate director in 1958, six years before Pop-Tart launched.
Bill Post, who helped create Pop-Tarts, will not be able to see the Netflix film as he passed away on February 10 at the age of 96. The filmmakers didn’t work with him on the film, but Seinfeld’s Kellogg executive character Bob Cabana is loosely based on him. His name was changed because screenwriter Feresten thought that having a character named Post working for Kellogg in a film about the rivalry between Kellogg and Post would be confusing to viewers.
Seinfeld and Feresten began writing what would become Thawed via Zoom after Hollywood productions ground to a halt during the COVID-19 pandemic. Feresten, whose favorite Pop-Tart is blueberry ice cream, describes the film to TIME as “an episode of Seinfeld with a really big budget.”
Pop-Tarts may not be the healthiest breakfast — they’re full of highly processed ingredients — but the movie is pure, wholesome fun.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
