Review: Frosted Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts (DC Comics Villains Edition)

Kellogg's Frosted Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts (Printed Fun Villains Edition) Box

I think I can imagine how the supervillainous plot to release Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts originated:

The Joker paces back-and-forth madly in the abandoned Pop-Tart factory he and Lex Luthor are using as a haphazard base of operations. With a cackle, he has a sudden idea.

“I’ve got it, Lex,” the Joker cries. “We’ll kidnap all the world’s Pop-Tarts and smush them together into otherwise nonsensical taste combinations! Just picture it: Watermelon S’Mores Pop-Tarts. Blueberry Root Beer Pop-Tarts. Cookies & Creme PB&J Pop-Tarts. We’ll flood the streets with a hasty pastry army, causing mass confusion and hysteria!”

“But why?” Lex replies.

The Joker chuckles maniacally: “Some men just want to watch the world yearn…for obscurely flavored, impulsively purchased breakfast treats!”

And thus, Chocolate Sugar Cookies Pop-Tarts were born. This flavor combo isn’t really that strange, but when’s the last time you had an actual chocolate sugar cookie? Maybe my cheeks are too stuffed with gingerbread men during December to notice, but compared to snickerdoodles or fruitcake, chocolate sugar cookies seem more like the shiny Pokémon of holiday dessert platters.

Kellogg's Frosted Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts (Printed Fun Villains Edition)

Since brow-furrowing flavor apparently wasn’t enough for the DC Universe’s villains, they also signed their work by hubristically painting themselves on each Pop-Tart—probably so Doctor Doom or Loki couldn’t claim this ploy as Marvel’s doing.

The printed Tart art is impressively done. Aside from a few faded utility belts and runny shoulder pads, the likes of Cheetah, Atrocitus, and Catwoman are all faithfully rendered on Kellogg’s white-frosted canvases. And I will say that Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts seem way softer and cookie-like in texture than any other Pop-Tart, with a pleasant melt-in-your-mouth mouthfeel.

But straight out of the holographic packaging, Chocolate Sugar Cookie’s flavor is a little more muddled. Don’t get me wrong: both titular tastes live up to their names. The crust is the exact same as Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tart crust: sweet and slightly starchy with a cocoa buttery crumble. The recognizable Sugar Cookie Pop-Tart filling is butterier, doughy, vaguely custardy, and other obscurely delicious adjectives that have my spellcheck reaching for its trusty red squiggle. And the icing? Well, it smacks of vanilla and granulated sugar, as if Kellogg’s literally wiped the smiles off some freshly baked gingerbread men and spread them on each Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tart like butter.

Now that’s an evil plot worth printing a Catwoman on.

The problem is that these individually delicious flavor notes don’t blend too well. Like Batman and the Joker, the light and dark sweetnesses of sugar cookie and chocolate create a cancelled-out equilibrium, with the resulting Pop-Tart tasting like a generically sweet pastry with no standout sensations.

Kellogg's Frosted Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts (Printed Fun Villains Edition) Toasted

Toasting makes Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts a bit better. The gooey combo of melted icing and roasted filling tastes like buttered marshmallows, while the already-literally-brown-but-now-golden-browned crust takes on a darker and richer chocolate sweetness. All together, this makes a toasted CSCPT taste like a flat Cocoa Krispies Treat.

And gee, for the guy that “broke the Bat,” Bane sure breaks in half pretty easily.

Kellogg's Frosted Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts (Printed Fun Villains Edition) Frozen

Of course I made sure Captain Cold was my frozen Pop-Tart of choice. I was expecting arctic magic—or at least some Schwarzeneggerean Mr. Freeze puns—but freezing a Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tart doesn’t change a whole lot. It mostly just makes the Pop-Tart taste like an ice cream sandwich that got worked over by a rolling pin.

Maybe not a huge compliment for most, but as someone who loves ice cream sandwiches on a spiritual, if not cosmic level, I still think Chocolate Sugar Cookies are worth chilling.

Overall, Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts are tasty enough, but they’re bound to have niche appeal. Chocoholics are better off investing in a Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tart value pack, while cookie dougholics (there’s that trusty red squiggly line) should stock up on original, Limited Edition Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts before they inevitably melt away with the wintertime.

It’s that rare cross-section of comic book fans and ice cream sandwich cosmologists who will truly appreciate Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts. And even though I’m no warrior of the inked page, I have to admit that heroically defeating Pop-Tart Lex Luthor with the heated coils of a kitchen appliance was pretty darn fun.

Superman’s heat vision’s got nothing on a Black & Decker Model TR3500SD.


 

The “Bowl:” Kellogg’s Limited Edition Frosted Villains Sugar Cookies Pop-Tarts

The Breakdown: When the rivaling flavors of chocolate & sugar cookie clash, the wake of their battle leaves behind a “jack of all trades, master of none” Pop-Tart. Toasting and freezing both do better jobs of unifying the tastes, but I’d still rather nail these pretty pastries to my wall.

The Bottom Line: 7 doughy Pokémon out of 10

(Quick Nutrition Facts: 190 calories, than 1 gram of fiber, 14 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein per 1 pastry serving)

***Check out our friends at Snack Cellar’s sweet, sweet review, too!***

4 responses »

  1. Maybe not a huge compliment for most, but as someone who loves ice cream sandwiches on a spiritual, if not cosmic level, I still think Chocolate Sugar Cookies are worth chilling.
    Dan… the more i read your blog and your reviews i think we would’ve been best friends xD
    I love them too xD

    You already know it’s hard to get Pop-Tarts here and it’s even harder to get special flavors. And you also know my gf and I love them! (I mean who doesn’t?) So we tend to be stingy, when it comes to “eating pop-tarts”. Or to more honest, we treat them as very special treat. ^^

    Unfortunately for us pop-tarts don’t keep us full for a long time, though they’re meant to be breakfast treats.
    Meaning one pop-tart for breakfast is way too less to be get us to lunch, but two are pretty high in calories and don’t keep us more full than one… so we tend to treat them as dessert.
    So, at the risk of already have asked this: How and when do you eat your pop-tarts? Breakfast? Dessert? Evening? Snack? ^^

    And for the review:
    Hm… i probably like sugar cookies, but they could be a bit tooo sweet for me, and i like chocolate from time to time, but i like it more subtle,… maybe i’m the target audience for this pop-tarts!;)

      • Thanks Dan!
        Now i don’t need to feel guilty eating pop-tarts as dinner dessert or late night snack xD
        (Yes it gnawed at my conscience, since i like to eat “foreign” treats and food as they are meant to be eaten ^^)

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