The First Edible Mascot

Pop-Tarts is a breakfast icon. But to grow the brand and reach a new audience, we needed to break into a new occasion — moving from breakfast to snack.

So, we turned to the kingdom of snacks — college football — and looked to leverage our first-ever bowl sponsorship. Unfortunately, 2023 was not the ideal year to sponsor a bowl game. With 42 other bowl games, and with the advent of the college football playoffs, most had become more meaningless than ever. With viewership down, players opting out, what used to be fun — brands sponsoring bowls — had become tired.

To break through, we had to overcome the fact that the game didn’t seem to matter to most young fans. Our sponsorship had to become more interesting than the action on the field.

We created the world’s first edible mascot, a giant Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts pastry, and fed it to the winning team on the field—as a snack. While most brands turn their food into a mascot, for the first time ever, we turned a mascot into food. And fed it to the winning team.

Truth Well Told: By injecting outrageous comedic energy into the staid world of brand mascots, Pop-Tarts became a pop culture sensation, capturing the conversation around college football, social media and mainstream media. The brand generated 1500% more mentions than competing sponsors, saw a 926% return on sponsorship, 21M more Pop-Tarts sold in the 8 weeks following the game compared to the 8 weeks prior.