Toast or roast the Frosted Marshmallow Hot Cocoa Pop-Tarts?

As a kid, our choices when it came to Pop-Tarts ranged from Unfrosted Strawberry to Unfrosted Strawberry. (The smell of an Unfrosted Strawberry Pop-Tart is, to this day, burned in my memory.) We eventually branched out to Frosted Strawberry and occasionally Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon. Wild Berry was a life-changing event.

As I entered college, the Pop-Tart game exploded. I ate so many Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tarts over those four years. While I tend to stick with the classic Frosted Strawberry and the always fantastic S’mores these days, I’ll still pick up the occasional limited edition flavor. (The Eggo waffles flavor was a dud.)

When I saw that the Frosted Marshmallow Hot Cocoa limited edition flavor was available on Target’s website last week, I jumped at the chance to buy them. This flavor seemed like the perfect combo of S’mores and Hot Fudge Sundae …

Where I found it

I’m not sure if the Frosted Marshmallow Hot Cocoa flavor is going to available in most stores, but I found it on Target’s website.

What I paid

$2.79 still seems like a good deal for a box of Pop-Tarts.

My thoughts

Oh, Frosted Marshmallow Hot Cocoa Pop-Tart, where did you go wrong?

From the moment I opened the foily package, I knew something was off. Pop-Tarts that are advertised as hot cocoa-flavored should hit you with that very smell. Like when you open a container of cocoa powder. These Pop-Tarts are very clearly the run-of-the-mill chocolate Pop-Tart flavor, the same you’d find if you bought a box of Hot Fudge Sundae ones.

As I mentioned earlier, I like Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tarts. But if I want Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tarts, I’ll buy Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tarts.

To properly test these Pop-Tarts, I tossed one of them into my toaster oven. It’s been a long time since I toasted a Pop-Tart, so I followed the box’s instructions to “toast on the lowest setting.”

In a side-by-side comparison of the non-toasted and the toasted Pop-Tart, I have to give the toasted version a slight win. One of my complaints about these is that they’re kind of dry. The filling doesn’t have enough flavor to make up for that dryness, but giving a Frosted Marshmallow Hot Cocoa Pop-Tart a slight toast did help improve that texture.

(Also, who’s putting Pop-Tarts in the microwave? They’re toaster pastries, not Hot Pockets.)

The box for the Frosted Marshmallow Hot Cocoa Pop-Tarts encourages you to “collect up to 10 designs.” First off, who’s collecting these? What do you do with them after you collected them? Does Kellogg’s sell plastic sleeves like you’d buy for baseball cards but only bigger? And second, “up to 10 designs”? That gives me the feeling that the Pop-Tart factory lost track of how many designs they were producing and just shrugged it off. I dunno, maybe eight? Definitely no more than ten, I imagine the Pop-Tarts foreman telling Jerry Seinfeld or whoever is in charge of Pop-Tarts these days.

Final verdict: PASS

I wanted to like these. The concept of a Pop-Tart that tastes like hot cocoa with marshmallows is a good idea. But the Pop-Tart that we got in real life was not only dry but also missing the marshmallowy punch that many marshmallow-flavored foods get right.