How Big is the Pop Tart Empire?

Reader Dean asks if I know how many — and how many kinds — of Pop Tarts are made by Kellogg’s each year. The total number is close to four billion if you can believe it. That’s more than 10 million every day. Given numbers like that it’s no wonder their corporate lawyers aren’t pounding down my door demanding I cease and desist using their brand name for a blogging project. Assuming every reader who visited me this morning went on to make a batch of homemade “tarts” I’d cut into their sales by a few thousand at best. Maybe a few hundred bucks in profits. Talk about a yawner. Their lawyers charge them that much just brushing their teeth in the morning.

A tougher question is how many kinds of Pop Tarts Kellogg’s makes. Originally Pop Tarts came in four flavors: strawberry, blueberry, brown sugar cinnamon and apple currant. Right now there are about 70 different flavors in the lineup, including some truly weird ones like Wild Watermelon, Strawberry Milkshake and Confetti Cake. About twenty that have gone into production over the years have been discontinued (French Toast, Wild Bubble-Berry, Hello Kitty Meowberry). Countless others have surely been tried in the Kellogg test kitchens but never made it as far as actual production.