Hot Thing Summer: Fantastic Four Pop-Tarts

I suppose that I admire the Pop-Tarts brand for being willing to try weird marketing ideas. Their "crazy good" commercials are odd and the fact that they ritualistically sacrifice a person-sized Pop-Tart after a college football bowl game is, well, I mean, it's memorable. By comparison, going in on the Fantastic Four: First steps marketing push seems like a safe idea. I didn't see any advertising for these, but I had my eye out for them, and around the beginning of July, they started showing up in stores.

There were four different varieties of these toaster pastries this time around. You could find strawberry, brown sugar cinnamon and toasted s'mores in pretty much any grocery story. Walmart went in for yet another exclusive with their blue raspberry flavor. The strawberry and blue raspberry boxes feature the FF prominently on the fronts, while the other two just have top banner branding. The back of each box look the same, with images of some of what you'll see inside.

There were a set of eight different images, and you'd see one on each Pop-Tart in each box.

The images actually transferred pretty well to the icing. Like the cereal, I ultimately decided that I couldn't keep a bunch of full Pop-Tart boxes in my house, so I opened the boxes and flattened them, and I ate the contents. This was the right choice, though I held my breath as I broke the boxes apart.

I took a picture of these every time I toasted a pair...for posterity, I guess (and blogs). The blue raspberry tasted like the most artificial food you've ever ingested. But this was an official Thing food product, so I went for it and I do not regret it.

Not stopping at the exclusive flavor, Walmart also released an online-only collector's box (we're really stretching the boundaries of the word "collector's" here) that contained a few different items. I missed these entirely, but your friend (and mine) Larry grabbed a couple of these for me. They called it the Launch Box! I get it. Here's what's inside!

The boxes all had another blue raspberry box of Pop-Tarts, with the logos and some of the branding shining in embossed metallic to distinguish it from the boxes you'd find on store shelves. Okay, this one I kept sealed in its package. In ten years, the contents will probably turn nuclear and burn a hole through the floor.

There's also a small cloth tote with the movie logo on it. I admit it -- this is pretty neat.

I guess it IS collectin' time.