Full disclosure: I don’t eat a lot of Pop Tarts for breakfast, and for too many years I didn’t eat them period. Sure I knew what most of them tasted like from memories of childhood, but they’re not my breakfast of choice.

An office drone, I eat my breakfast in the office. I like to stick with more grown-up breakfasts like Greek yogurt with granola. I would hate to get called into a surprise business meeting and have to let my boss know I needed a few more minutes because my Jolly Rancher Pop Tarts were in the toaster oven. Call me crazy, but a grown man in business attire shoving Hot Fudge Sundae Pop Tarts in his face doesn’t exactly scream “Promote me!”

To those points, I uncharacteristically avoided Kellogg’s Pumpkin Pie Pop Tarts for too many years since their introduction in 2010. It’s funny how starting a junk food blog changes your rules about everything, and I’m frequently the proud owner of multiple value-packs of toaster pastry.

Kellogg’s Pumpkin Pie Pop Tarts

“That’s a funny-looking pumpkin pie,” I thought to myself as I unwrapped Pumpkin Pie Pop Tarts. The colors are all wrong – a standard pale white with an even whiter frosting and, for some reason, sprinkles that include purple.

The proper orange-brown color we’re all familiar with rests in the center. I think these Pop Tarts would look more aesthetically appetizing if they used the same frosting of the Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop Tarts to align with actual pumpkin pie, then adding some white sprinkles to mimic a whipped cream topping and some autumn orange sprinkles to signal fall.

I guess if you’re gonna go basic, pumpkin & sprinkles is the way to do it…

But looks aren’t everything (except in dating), so let’s dig in.

Pumpkin Pie Pop Tarts are tasty but fall short of spectacular when eaten from the package. The pastry is dry and rather bland as usual, but I suppose it works as an imperfect representation of a floury pumpkin pie crust and has its place better than most Pop Tarts. Eating portions with the white frosting helps deliver some much-needed sweetness. Though, we all know, it’s the filling that matters most.

Does it taste like pumpkin pie filling? It does! I checked the ingredient list and was delighted to see real pumpkin, ginger, and nutmeg. I just wish there were more filling to overpower the blasé pastry.

Before reaching any conclusions, I toasted one like a real-life adult human being.

This vastly improved the experience. The crust suddenly had a toasty, buttery flavoring to it. When warmed, the pumpkin spices in the filling popped a lot more. I no longer felt like I was eating a child’s breakfast, so long as I closed my eyes and paid no attention to the oddly-colored and haphazardly applied sprinkles strewn about.

Kellogg’s deserves much props for the pumpkin filling inside Pumpkin Pie Pop Tarts. It’s no wonder these have been a recurring fall seasonal since their introduction nearly a decade ago. I craved even more pumpkin, but luckily, we have plenty of other pumpkin spice products to deliver more of that sweet pumpkiny goodness.

I exit with my personal serving suggestion. Keep in mind that I’m a garbage human now:

I’m proud of how disgusting I am in case you were wondering.

Warmed My Pumpkin Spice Heart Rating: 8 out of 10
Made Me Want to Put Sprinkles in my Pumpkin Pie Rating: 9 out of 10
Overall Rating: 7.5 out of 10

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