Guess who’s back. Back again! Pop-Tart Quest is back! Tell a friend. Pop-Tart’s back, Pop-Tart’s back, Pop-Tart’s back, Pop-Tart’s back do do do do do! This is… Pop-Tart Quest!

What are you doing with your life, Kellogg’s? It’s been months since the last edition of the #PTQ, and that hasn’t been because I don’t care about my loyal  PTCuties; it’s because they haven’t been releasing new flavors. I check! Believe me, every time I’m at the store, I scour the breakfast aisle.

While nowhere near as regularly occurring as they had once been, new flavors do occasionally still emerge. This past week, I saw one I had never quite expected up to now…

Hey, here’s an idea: breakfast-flavored breakfast!

This leads me to wonder… do all Fruit Loops taste the same? They are different colors in the wild, and my brain refuses to believe different colored food can taste the same. I go through this with Eat N Park smiley cookies ALL THE TIME. Don’t give me crap about “food coloring”; they don’t make the smiley faces different colors if they aren’t different flavors! It’s just science.

But these Tarts, while displaying Loops of all colors, are all the same McDonald’s Burgers pink slime inside. Where’s the Orange Loop flavor? Or Purple? If all Fruit Loops taste the same and the colors are a lie… which fruit is it? There are so many fruits! Apple. Grape. Kiwi. Uh, banana? At least those four… there are at least four fruits in the world. Which one is this all-purpose loop cereal? Maybe this is why they aren’t called Fruits Loops?

I’m on to something…

Tactical deductions aside, upon unwrapping these Tarts, you immediately notice two things:

First, these are another in a line of Tarts that have Tart-Art. The frosting is plain white with cartoons of Fruit Loops. I… don’t know what this adds. They couldn’t have done the typical Pop-Tart frosting but used crushed up bits of Fruit Loops instead of that weird Pop-Tart rock salt? I know what Fruit Loops look like; you don’t need to show me. “HERE, SEE? THIS IS WHAT YOU COULD BE EATING INSTEAD!”

Secondly… WOW, these smell just like Fruit Loops! It’s uncanny. I didn’t even realize I knew what Fruit Loops smelled like until I opened these, but my brain instantly went, “Oh yep, that’s it. That’s Fruit Loops”.

Are you curious how the tasting went? Here it is:

Bites 1-3: “Hey, this is so weird! These taste like Fruit Loops! Rad! How did they do that?”

Bites 4-5: “These are okay, I guess, but they are quite oversweet.”

Bites 6+: “Oh my god, these are putrid.”

After abandoning this chapter of the Quest: “This is what my mouth tastes like forever, I guess.”

TASTE: F : These were ABHORRENT. Case closed. Marginally better than Watermelon, but you know what? I’m not even sure that is true.

ART: C- : Why are we just doodling on our Pop-Tarts now? Is that supposed to distract me from the lack of regular new ideas?

SMELL: A- : Just like the cereal, as odd as that is. There’s not even any milk anywhere in sight!

TOASTED-TO-UNTOASTED RATIO: 8% : It could be that I ate the untoasted Tart first, and by the time I started the toasted one, I was entirely done with these, but the toasted one was MARKEDLY worse.

GRADE: F+

SURPRISINGLY bad. I didn’t even finish the taste-test Tarts, and I gave the rest of the box away. Watermelon was the only previous flavor that I couldn’t at least finish the box out of respect.