I Tried the New(?) Pokemon Pop-Tarts from Target to Find Out if You Gotta Catch ‘Em

Alongside the branded kickballs and Caboodles currently being scalped on eBay, Target just launched a store-exclusive batch of Pokémon Pop-Tarts. While these new Vanilla Cupcake toaster pastries don’t feature the iconic pocket monsters anywhere but the box, I still picked them up for this review… even if I have my suspicions regarding how “new” they really are.

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So are these new Pop-Tarts new or not?

We’ll get into whether “Pokémon Pop-Tarts” are new later. For now, I want to focus on whether Vanilla Cupcake Pop-Tarts are new. There I was on the Pop-Tarts website, about to painstakingly compare the nutritional facts of the “new” Vanilla Cupcake and the pre-existing Confetti Cupcake Pop-Tarts to see whether there was any difference of note, when I discovered that the pastry photo on the front of both flavors’ boxes was 95% identical. The only difference between the two photos? Kellogg’s has painstakingly edited all the green sprinkles seen on the Confetti Cupcake box to red, blue, orange, or yellow on the Vanilla Cupcake box.

Folks, if these two Pop-Tart variants are similar enough to use the exact same image on their packaging, I expect the recipes are nearly identical, if not entirely. For posterity, consider the following Sporked‘s official review of both Vanilla Cupcake and Confetti Cupcake Pop-Tarts.

Frosted Vanilla Cupcake Pokémon Pop-Tarts

New Pokemon Pop-Tarts?

Pros: My complaints with the Pokémon-ishness of these Pop-Tarts aside, the Vanilla Cupcake flavor is delivered in spades. I definitely prefer these to those bite-sized 12-packs of vanilla cupcakes that deliver no flavor besides “frosting“.

Cons: I’m not too mad that these are just Confetti Cupcake Pop-Tarts with a Pikachu slapped on the box. I’m very mad these aren’t the long-awaited return of the original Pokémon Pop-Tarts! Back in 2001, we were all blessed with PokéBerry Pop-Tarts; I remember these promotional toaster pastries fondly (even if the gift of hindsight has me questioning how exotic the round “Pokéball-shaped” sprinkles really were). Oh, reviving a one-off flavor from 25 years ago would be too hard? Why didn’t we bring back the still-sold Wild Cherry Pop-Tarts with Pokémon-shaped sprinkles that dropped a year earlier?

Credit: Griffin Parker / Target

Rating:

7.5/10

Sporks