Yes, I am of course referring to the origin of.... Pop Tarts!
This week's Saturday movie post is about Unfrosted starring Jerry Seinfeld who also directed the movie and co-wrote the screenplay.
The year: 1963.
The place: Battle Creek, Michigan
The man: Bob Cabana, head of development at the Kellogg's corporation.
The project: creating a shelf-stable, fruit-based pastry breakfast food before their cross town rival, Post.
Post may have an edge thanks to plans they stole from Kellogg's. Before Post can work out the kinks in their stolen plans (the pastry tends to set toasters on fire), Bob recruits former co-worker Donna "Stan" Stankowski from NASA to come back to Kellogg's and beat Post to the grocery store shelves which is more vital to the country than beating the Russians to the moon.
Caution: you should NOT be taking ANY of this seriously.
At all!
Tensions ratchet up.
Kellogg's obtains exclusive rights to 99% of the world's sugar by making a deal with Puerto Rican criminal El Sucre.
Post secures secure rights to Cuban sugar after a visit to Nikita Khrushchev in the USSR.
It's enough to get President Kennedy involved.
Bob learns that creating a breakfast product that is served without milk can be a dangerous idea. Bob is kidnapped and threatened by dairy industry's milkmen syndicate.
A "taste pilot" at Kellogg's is killed in an pastry testing accident. He is buried with full cereal honors:
- Snap, Krackle and Pop presents the widow with a ceremonially folded "prize inside"
- Toucan Sam sings "Ave Maria".
- After the coffin is lowered in the ground, the grave is filled with cereal and milk.
The widow wonders what the hell is going on here.
We're all wondering what the hell is going on here.
But Bob and Stan have done it: they have created a rectangular, fruit-filled food packaged in foil that can be toasted called the..... Wait for it!
...
TRAT POP!
....
What?
Yes, Trat Pop.
Anyway....
Thurl Ravenscroft, frustrated Shakespearean actor who is Tony the Tiger for Kellogg's, is convinced by the milk syndicate that the new breakfast pastry will make the cereal mascot obsolete. So Thurl convinces the other mascots to go on strike.
Just as Mike Puntz of the FDA is set to arrive to certify the... Trat Pop (they were still calling it that) as safe and ready for public consumption, Thurl (his Tony the Tiger garb ripped and shredded to make him resemble the Q-Anon Shaman) leads his fellow mascots to violently breach Kellogg's headquarters, hoping to stop the... Trat Pop from being certified by the FDA.
Does this remind you of anything?
Is director Jerry Seinfeld being too subtle?
Mike Puntz?
Get it?
...
Is this thing on?
Anyway...
Too late. The Trat Pop is certified and Walter Cronkite addresses an anxious and nervous nation, reading a news brief from a piece of Silly Putty (there are reasons) that the attack on Kellogg's is over and the company will be sending to the nation's grocery shelves the new Pop Tart.
Well, the most trusted man in TV news just told millions of viewers the damn thing is a Pop Tart so Kellogg's immediately changes the packaging to Pop Tart.
Post rushes it's competing pastry product called Country Squares to grocery stores where the boring staid packaged product just sits there while Pop Tarts fly off the shelves.
Now famous, Bob is doing an interview on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson when he is shot by Andy Warhol, who is furious that the name "Pop-Tart" sounds like "pop art." Bob survives thanks to the foil packet of Pop Tarts in his jacket pocket.
And then there is an elaborate musical dance number featuring the entire cast of the movie over the closing credits and...
Oh my God! What was that?
Andrea and I went into watching Unfrosted thinking this would be a profoundly stupid movie.
Unfrosted is a profoundly stupid movie so on a positive note, this movie met our expectations.
Unfrosted has a lot of jokes, stumbling and tumbling over each other. If a joke bombs, don't worry. Another one will be along in 10 seconds. A lot of jokes depend on knowing things like a person who is old as Jerry Seinfeld or me would know as children of the 1960's.
If you were born in THIS century, there's not a lot for you in Unfrosted.
Jerry Seinfeld as Bob Cabana is just Jerry Seinfeld as himself.
After bitchin' and whinin' about being an Oompa Loompa in Wonka, Hugh Grant signs on to play Thurl Ravenscroft as a Shakespearean Tony the Tiger furry. Does Hugh Grant lose a bet? Does he owe a bookie a lot of money?
Amy Schumer as Marjorie Post doesn't really land but Melissa McCarthy as "Stan" is on point and funny as she can be.
Look, I could hedge my bets and say Unfrosted is not THAT bad and there's some good mixed in with the not so good but...
Yeah, I'm going to render my verdict.
Unfrosted is bad.
But I kind of knew that going in. So...
So to quote Walter Kronkite, "Well, that's the way it is."
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