Haven’t bought name brand Pop-Tarts in years, but have occasionally picked up Toaster 'Betes or whatever the off-brand versions are called.
Noticed a ‘sale’ on the name brand and got conned into buying them. They’re now smaller, have less frosting, and have way less filling. The damn things were so flimsy that two of them snapped trying to take them out of the toaster.
If you get a craving for some nice sugary betes for breakfast, stick to the off-brands. They’re now higher quality than the name brand.
The future is stupid.
Yup. Whatever the generic store brand is 1000% better. I tried both recently too and Pop Tarts were disappointing.
They do have more flavor options but that’s really it.
If anyone’s interested, Bon Appétit had a “Gourmet Makes” or something where one of their chefs would recreate snacks like Oreos, Pop Tarts, and others. They look great. I tried a version of the oreos, mine were nowhere near as pretty, but the taste is so much better.
They were based on real tarts originally. They’ve gotten so crappy you might as well go back to baking them yourself.
I think baking tarts is a sex crime.
Product death by a thousand cuts. Cut here, cut there…
Every can of pringles I buy now is undercooked and the last can I bought they forgot to add salt to any of the chips. (No it wasn’t labeled as “reduced salt” or anything like that, I checked)
Ya. I really noticed the recent decline in pringles. As cheap and crappy as they were before, they are noticeably way worse now.
The “hot ones” are good, though. I still prefer the Pringles style Lays buffalo wing flavor, but those are damn hard to find.
As a US emigrant, every time I go back to the US the first thing I buy is Pop Tarts because it’s the hardest thing to get outside the US, and is the thing I miss the most. And it’s years between. And every time it’s significantly worse than the last time. It’s not just your imagination - the quality loss is not just noticeable but STAGGERING.
People in the UK are saying it about Cadbury too. :(
Kinder chocolate is still safe. Hershey’s been dead since 2006. Kitkats died (for me) when they removed the foil barrier, sad moment for chocolate lovers everywhere.
Fortunately and unexpected Milano Cookies are really good and have replaced Kinder Buenos because they’ve gotten too sweet.
I think I’ve hit my mid 30’s dark chocolate phase because dark chocolate is delicious.
They got bought by an American company, so naturally the suck followed. Sale should’ve been stopped.
That explains a lot. I used to live the raspberry ones so much and couldn’t wait to share them with my two girls.
All I got was, “Dad, these suck.”
So I tried one and was just baffled. It did suck. I chalked it up to my taste buds changing, but this makes much more sense.
Chocolate has gotten worse and worse too.
I’m fairly certain they stopped using actual ingredients and make all the flavors exclusively with artificial flavors now. Everything tastes like the same corn syrupy artificially flavored trash. The flavors used to actually be differentiated and taste like something besides sweetened chemical disaster.
I tried a twinkie for the first time in ages and maybe it is just a rose‑tinted memory but I swear they tasted better when I was a kid. It was really dry and the filling barely had any flavor. It was just greasy.
Cosmic brownies and oatmeal cream pies… Not good now either.
I believe I read recently that the price of cocoa beans has gotten much more expensive so chocolate producers have started using more sugar. Therefore the chocolate is lower quality.
I’d rather pay more and eat less of it for real chocolate.
It doesn’t even matter if cocoa was more expensive.
They will look for any way to make it cheaper, quality be damned. 2¢ saved per candy bar looks great on an excel spreadsheet, the only thing that matters to those fucking finance bro clowns.
Oh no, don’t come back again unless you’re very, very white and haven’t picked up any noticeable accent. These shitty Pop Tarts aren’t worth dying for.
You have your priorities, others have theirs…
The equity firms will enshittify everything
If it has “equity” or “capital” in its name you are fucked.
That’s too bad. Recently I’ve been thinking of picking some up again. They taste good burnt (to me). Or I should say they used to, I guess…
Oh we know.
They are garbage.
Okay, I have to put my foot down. Pop-Tarts originally didn’t have frosting and they were much better. I don’t want to hear any more about this frosting shit.
The frosting started in 1967. It’s sort of been a while on that one.
Some varieties/flavors never had frosting. Thus the confusion.
I don’t remember any that didn’t, only a few flavors that normally came frosted but also had a marked unfrosted version.
Is this a Mandela effect thing from the universe you came from? Did the Monopoly man have his monocle there?
I dunno. Maybe. I didn’t eat a ton of pop tarts, honestly. But I’m fairly sure there were unfrosted flavors back in the day.
But I still have a monopoly set with a battleship as one of the playing pieces.
Wait, they try to say that wasn’t one of them now? Because of course it was.
So it’s basically a cracker now?
It’s like a cracker sandwich with the same amount of filling you’d get by lightly buttering toast.
They are also ultra processed. They probably don’t really even have to wrap them in that fake foil wrap because they are gonna stay exactly the same without it.
Dude those things are more sugary than a handful of candy along with minimal nutritional value. They were good like 15+ years ago but the enshittification has fully run its course. I stopped buying them years ago…
I don’t know about knock off brands but there were such better options for toaster pastries since the 90’s. So much so one of my kids tried a pop tart at some point and thought there disgusting. Overly sweet on a cardboard cracker.
I think they have always been bad. All the brand bame stuff is usually bad. You just gotta look for the good stuff.
Brand names mean nothing anymore. The 80’s are over. Everything comes from a supplier and companies stamp their brand on it. Buy the things that are quality and ignore the brand, unless the brand has a reputation for being horrible.
That’s not exactly true.
Yes, most of it is manufactured by a co-packer. And these co-packers also make similar products for other brands. But each one (usually) has their own recipe. Sometimes the differences are very minor, others can be drastic. Sometimes they have specialty ingredients (e.g. Himalayan sea salt instead of regular salt, or a partner brand). Sometimes the co-packer offers a standard recipe as a starter for the smaller brands.
Historically, the brand-name used a higher-quality recipe, worthy of the higher sale price. Generics would use something cheaper, comfortably taking the lower end of the market. Costco’s Kirkland brand is famous for going a step higher than the major brand, which is very unusual for a house brand.
Anecdotal, but it was true for the company I worked for. Used to make ten brands of sump hose - the only difference was the bag we put it in and which fittings were included. The material, molds, and specs never varied.
Yeah, the weird part being that the off-brands are now better quality than the name brands. When they suddenly drop in quality to match everything will taste like sawdust and tears.
Now I usually either have a PBJ or bread rolls or even soda crackers and bananas for breakfast.
I’m a barbarian, I’ll just rip a chunk off of a loaf of bread and microwave it for a few seconds so it’s all warm and moist.
Oh, and I cook entire packs of bacon at once so sometimes I’ll cram some bacon in there, with some hash browns from the air fryer and microwaved eggs. Just like barbarians used to do.
In this economy!!!
