The Definitive Pop-Tart Rankings
Saw this tweet the other day and it made me think.
What is the best flavor of Pop-Tarts?
If you're anything like me, you ate Pop-Tarts as a kid. If you’re anything like me, you still eat Pop-Tarts in your forties.
What you may not know is that there are 32 different types of Pop-Tarts being sold right now. Yes, 32.
So let’s rank them. How do we rank Pop-Tarts from top to bottom? Let’s try it out
32. Churro
So one time we got the Churro flavor at Ollie’s on a super marked down discount, I think it was $1.75 a box. At that point, how can you not try them? And yet, even at $1.75, they were overpriced. They didn’t taste like Churros, they tasted like sadness. Even knockoff Pop-Tart brands are more edible than this crap was.1
31. Eggo Frosted Maple
Just why? If you’re like me and don’t like Maple Syrup on Waffles, why would you want to eat this?
30. Unfrosted Brown-Sugar Cinnamon
29. Unfrosted Blueberry
28. Unfrosted Strawberry
There was a time when you could only get Pop-Tarts unfrosted. It was a sad time, about the time that Kellogg’s ripped off Post to get Pop-Tarts to market.2
27. Simply Frosted Harvest Strawberry
If I’m eating a Pop-Tart, I don’t want to pretend that it’s healthy. I have no idea why this product exists.
26. Caramel Pretzel
25. Cinnamon Sugar Pretzel
You know what’s really bad? Taking the flavor of pretzel and trying to make it into a toaster pastry. While pretzel makes other great non-pretzel things3, it does not make for a great Pop-Tart.
24. Tropical Mango
23. Froot Loops
Let’s make cereal taste even more unhealthy? Hard pass.
22. Frosted Apple Fritter
21. Frosted Red Velvet
A lot of people want to tell you that red velvet is a good flavor in foods, not just in Pop-Tarts. These people are lying to you and themselves.
20. Frosted Lemon Crème
I had really high hopes for this flavor and was sadly disappointed. You would think lemon crèmewould would work and for whatever reason, it just….didn’t.
19. Frosted Chocolate Chip
18. Frosted Cinnamon Roll
17. Frosted Strawberry Milkshake
16. Frosted Wildlicious Wild Berry
15. Frosted Peach Cobbler
I didn’t know this flavor existed until I started these rankings but I very, very, VERY much would like to try them. If I tried them, I think this ranking would be higher given how fantastic peach cobbler is on its own.
14. Frosted Raspberry
13. Frosted Blueberry
12. Frosted Strawberry
The real flavors of your childhood. The fruit flavors are good, but they have been largely eclipsed by the sweeter flavors.
11. Frosted Hot Fudge Sundae
And the Chocolate flavors start….
10. Frosted Confetti Cupcake
9. Frosted S'mores
It’s weird because I really don’t like to eat Smores all that much, mainly because it’s a pain in the ass to make them and I really don’t like graham crackers all the much. But this flavor works.
8. Frosted Banana Crème Pie
Another favor I didn’t know existed until I started these rankings. Given my love of banana crème pie and its status as the second-best dessert on God’s Green Earth4, I might do things to get my hands on these that I definitely would not do for a Klondike bar.
7. Frosted Cherry
6. Frosted Crisp Apple
These are the superior of all fruit Pop-Tarts. Crisp Apple is a relatively new entry and it’s surprisingly good; I might actually be under ranking these to be honest.
5. Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon
The long-standing staple of childhood. This flavor polarizes a lot of people; some love it, some hate it. But it is an extremely reliable flavor.
4. Frosted Boston Crème
I prefer vanilla crème donuts to Boston crème, so I wasn’t sure what my take on them was going to be. But I was surprisingly shocked to taste them and realize how amazing they were. The one drawback is the fact that they are almost too sweet for breakfast and make a better dessert pastry than breakfast one.
3. Frosted Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
A surprising recent entrant to the top three. Cookie Dough is an amazing flavor as it is. There’s a variety of cookies that you could use here and also have cookie dough flavor5. Chocolate chip is the original, however, and it creates a great flavor and texture.
2. Frosted Cookies and Crème
Cookies and Crème is the best ice cream flavor. So you should not be surprised that Cookies and Crème is a high quality Pop-Tart flavor as well. However, the best flavor is…
1. Frosted Chocolate Fudge
I don’t know what it is that makes the Frosted Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tarts so good. I really don’t know. Maybe because it’s ALL THE CHOCOLATE that’s in there. But for a long long time it has been the best of all Pop-Tart flavors. And it will be very hard for Kellogg to come up with something better.
As always, you may disagree. But you won’t be right.
Pop-Tarts are in the pantheon of “please by the name brand it’s worth it” products along with Coca-Cola products and Heinz ketchup.
This is weirdly true: https://www.mashed.com/117295/untold-truth-pop-tarts/
The Pretzel roll and Combos come to mind.
I’m pretty convinced that when I die and go to heaven, banana pudding will be served.
Can you imagine Pop-Tarts made of Biscoff cookie butter? That’s probably what they would serve in Flavortown.