For the unenlightened, Pop-Tarts are ‘toaster pastries.’ But how do they WORK? This question derives from a MST3k short - specifically, the one about the four girls at a junior college taking a home economics course. The scene in question involved the four of them in their dorm room discussing their future. The narrator said, “And then Kaye asked that all-important question.” Tom Servo piped up with, “How do Pop-Tarts work?”
Let’s see what we can figure out.
Toasting Instructions:
- Set toaster to low or light.
- Remove pastry from pouch. Drop pastry vertically into toaster.
- Attend toaster while heating. Children should be supervised.
CAUTION: Heated pastry may be too hot to handle. Allow to cool briefly.
Remove carefully from toaster. No refrigeration needed. Not suitable for microwave use.
Ingredients:
Enriched wheat flour, brown sugar, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, dextrose, corn syrup, graham (whole wheat), flour, crackermeal, corn syrup solids, dried whey, water, wheat gluten, honey, corn starch, cocoa (treated with alkali), milk chocolate (sugar, whole milk solids, chocolate liquor, and cocoa butter), natural and artificial flavors, baking soda, salt, lactose, modified corn starch, sodium aluminum phosphate, dried egg whites, color added, gelatin, cocoa, yellow #6, red #40, blue #1, xanthan gum.
I’ve pondered this for many years. I’ve come to one conclusion.
Sure, we all know and love Pop-Tarts’ ease of use, their great variety, their tasty filling, and, depending on how you cook them, their soft and chewy or hard and tangy outer crusts. BUT… Pop-Tarts are not all that they seem to be. You may ask the question “How do Pop-Tarts Work”, the correct inquiry would have been “How do We Work for Pop-Tarts?”
Five years ago, humourist Dave Barry discovered the very tip of what turned out to be a massive Government project. In one of his weekly columns, he noted that “Strawberry Pop-Tarts (SPTs), when put in a toaster that is then rigged to never eject them, turn an everyday piece of 1950’s kitchen equipment into a flamethrower.” Basically, Mr. Barry duct taped the lever of the toaster down, put two SPTs in it, and plugged it in. After some smoke, flames up to 18" in height erupted from the toaster. The world laughed, but did not see what the now deceased author was really trying to tell us.
After I read the article, I was left feeling half satisfied, like there was a deeper meaning that I was unable to grasp. It was not until the 11th grade when I took my first real physics class that the enormity of the
situation dawned on me. I was lounging about, chatting with my lab partner, when I drew up the following free-form proof, mostly on whimsy:
- Pop-Tart outer surface is dry, but also very porous which would mean that it would certainly burn, and burn hot, but not for very long, much like kindling for a larger fire.
- SPT inner filling is, as the box puts it, a “Delicious, real fruit paste”. Pastes contain large amounts of moisture, and therefore do not burn easily, if they were subjected to great heat for extended periods of time (qqv-toaster), by the time enough water had evaporated for them to burn, any combustible substances (ie- sugar, etc) suspended in the paste would have evaporated/been turned to ash by the heat.
- Toasters are not flammable.
QED-For the Pop-Tart to cause the toaster to belch forth flames of 18" in height for an extended period of time (reports ranged from 30 seconds to 3 minutes), the filling or crust of the Pop Tart must have some highly flammable substance in it.
I pondered the proof, and soon realised what was happening. Long ago the governments of the world realised that a nuclear war would be unproductive, and pledged not to have one, but needed to keep their nukes around so their citizens would not think them to be wimps. They of course set about devising new ways to win a modern war without nuclear weapons, and researchers at Dow Chemicals discovered a substance that was highly flammable, absorbable by the human digestive system, and, as a bonus, having a pleasant sugary taste. They let the Pentagon know about it, and between them and numerous breakfast food companies (Pop-Tarts being the name brand, but there are plenty of imitators out there) devised the trickiest weapon of war ever.
The substance that Dow discovered was injected in large quantities into the Pop-Tarts crust and filling (listed as “sugar” in the ingredients, due to its yummy taste). They then started a massive subterranean dig under the populated regions of North America, and in that dig put a series of gargantuan hot plates, capable of generating, almost instantly, sustained heats of 600 degrees Fahrenheit.
The idea behind the Pop-Tart scheme is as follows:
- We are invaded by a Communist country (Cuba, China, Sweden, etc).
- Invaders go to take over a residential area.
- US Gov. turns on hot plates, and the inhabitants of the houses (who have been munching Pop-Tarts since they were little, and now have digestive tracks lined with the Substance) explode, taking out many Communist soldiers with them.
This sound tactic not only stops the invasion, but keeps the US from having to spend valuable money on the military (all those trillions of dollars supposedly wasted on defense in the past fifty years have really gone to building and maintaining a luxury resort for politicians located on the dark side of the moon), and keeps the politicians (who you will never see eating
Pop-Tarts) safe.
Well, that explains how Pop-Tarts work (a more pedestrian explaination would be that the water in the filling partially evaporates, becomes trapped and heats it from the inside, causing the filling to remain moist and hot long after the well cooked outside has cooled, but only hosers would say something like that). It also explains all those spontaneous human combustion stories you hear… they are just lifetime Pop-Tart eaters that stayed in front of the heater or out in the sun for too long.
That’s it.
/lno
ps-All Pop-Tart eaters, please continue chomping them, as we non-eaters want to see who leaves the biggest crater when the Invasion comes.
