Haven't bought name brand Pop-Tarts in years, but have occasionally picked up Toaster 'Betes or whatever the off-brand versions are called.

Noticed a 'sale' on the name brand and got conned into buying them. They're now smaller, have less frosting, and have way less filling. The damn things were so flimsy that two of them snapped trying to take them out of the toaster.

If you get a craving for some nice sugary betes for breakfast, stick to the off-brands. They're now higher quality than the name brand.

The future is stupid.

I don't know if it's nostalgia or if the recipe has changed but I feel Pop Tarts are worse than when I was a kid (late 80s / early 90s).

I buy store brand everything now. It's ridiculous. Have you had a brand name Fig Newton lately? It's sawdust. Ridiculous.

Late 40s here so same, it's definitely not nostalgia. I was a chonkey bastard so I'd get the s'mores ones once they came out and eat the crust ring on the outside then pull them open to gorge on the sweet s'mores innards.

There's so little filling now that both halves seem bare, and the things are so thin and brittle they crack into a dozen pieces in the attempt.

I have not but I might have made that mistake in the future. Thanks for the warning. It's so weird that off-brands for everything appeared as cheaper lower quality versions and then the world went to such shit they're now the higher quality version.

How are so many things now worse quality and higher priced than their own knock-offs? They should all be committing Sudoku in shame.

committing Sudoku in shame

The Pillsbury Doughboy has a bit of a belly, it might be difficult to disembowel himself with a math puzzle.

Winco ones are the bomb. Love employee owned stores - overall quality there is top-notch.

If you can get them, the Clover Valley ones ($1.85 @ Dollar General) are pretty good, although the fig filling is golden rather than brown.

Pop tarts are infinitely shittier than they were even 5 years ago, it's not just you. I bought one pack last year and never will again. They are trash crackers that feel like some bean counter went "yep still frosted on top, filling in the middle, good to go". Now they are trying to sell "super stuffed" variants too that still don't meet the old standards. Fuck poptarts.

I appreciate the typo, it's funnier.

either choice too sugary for me, would try a poptart without frosting if was a thing

Thank you. Will give em a try!

How are so many things now worse quality and higher priced than their own knock-offs?

They earned public trust and brand-recognition over many years. Then, once they became the de facto product, they started min-maxing their production. Smaller portions, cheaper ingredients, automating as much of the production line as possible to cut employees, reducing wages for "less work", etc. They're hoping no one would notice that the product you're buying isn't living up to the original standard.

If you're willing to pay the same price for cheaper production, then the company can literally make money without having to sell more product. They can show in their shareholder meetings that sales are going way up, even though consumer purchases may not have changed much at all. Heck, even if sales are going down, profits could still show an increase!

Then of course, there's "inflation," which they use to justify raising prices over time. Even though the product is worse than the original, you're now paying way more for it.

This is the endgame of capitalism. Maximize profits at the cost of consumers. When money is the primary focus of a business, quality of goods and services will always degrade over time.

My eyes

At this point the only brand name stuff that's truly ahead is soda 😭

I’ll have to keep that in mind: I get a craving for pop tarts every 6 months ago. I never understood it because it’s so much worse than my memory and they are just not edible. I’d rather eat the box.

Next time I’ll have to see whether there is a generic

https://www.poptarts.com/en_US/products/all-flavors/pop-tarts-unfrosted-strawberry-product.html

Apparently, pop tarts without frosting are a thing... They are probably still really sugary even without the frosting.

They do! They have a strawberry one that doesn’t have frosting and it’s so much better, in my opinion.

You have to have the frosting. There’s so little filling that you can’t taste it, but you need something on the cardboard

I mean.. unfrosted pop tarts are a thing. The pastry itself is so sweet though that the actual nutritional difference seems pretty minor (something like 5g more of sugar per 2 pack of pop tarts when comparing frosted vs unfrosted strawberry)

It’s not a typo, just a meme. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/commit-sudoku

I dunno, Aldi and Lidl in the UK have half decent cola, lemonade and other flavours of fizzy drinks.
Their iced tea isn't too bad either.

When the price difference is less than £1 per 2Litre bottle or over £3 for the branded stuff I'll put up with the difference.

Same way with hot pockets, you can't drip any hot sauce or grease on your face because there's almost nothing in them. These days I make my snacks.

The future is stupid.

True dat. There is Lemmy tho, so. Half-credit.

Lol, I'm glad someone else would eat the crust ring first.

I would break off the crust pieces and eat those, and then break the poptart in half long-ways so I had two long strips, enabling me to take very large full-mouth bites of just the sweet frosted and filled part

That's a fair point. I'm mostly just firing a shot at the shitty walmart brand ones, but it's probably way better elsewhere

Paper cuts are no joke when you're only 2 inches tall.

The American trick is to dip them in high fructose corn syrup to help wash down the sugar.

Brand names mean nothing anymore. The 80's are over.
Everything comes from a supplier and companies stamp their brand on it.
Buy the things that are quality and ignore the brand, unless the brand has a reputation for being horrible.

Yeah, the weird part being that the off-brands are now better quality than the name brands. When they suddenly drop in quality to match everything will taste like sawdust and tears.

That's not exactly true.

Yes, most of it is manufactured by a co-packer. And these co-packers also make similar products for other brands. But each one (usually) has their own recipe. Sometimes the differences are very minor, others can be drastic. Sometimes they have specialty ingredients (e.g. Himalayan sea salt instead of regular salt, or a partner brand). Sometimes the co-packer offers a standard recipe as a starter for the smaller brands.

Historically, the brand-name used a higher-quality recipe, worthy of the higher sale price. Generics would use something cheaper, comfortably taking the lower end of the market. Costco's Kirkland brand is famous for going a step higher than the major brand, which is very unusual for a house brand.

Scan with with Yuka app and I bet you'll find more garbage in them. Oddly enough, a lot of big named brands have the most toxic additives.

As a US emigrant, every time I go back to the US the first thing I buy is Pop Tarts because it's the hardest thing to get outside the US, and is the thing I miss the most. And it's years between. And every time it's significantly worse than the last time. It's not just your imagination - the quality loss is not just noticeable but STAGGERING.

I am convinced the terms "generic" and "off brand" are both psyops to get people more into big brands.

LOL, WTF is that photo.

I mean, back in the day they were true. You could get the name brand stuff, or the off brand stuff that looked mostly the same but had a weird after taste or something. Now the name brand stuff has degraded completely but the off brands have barely changed. Hopefully it stays this way, because we're like 2 steps of enshittification away from everything tasting like sawdust.

Anecdotal, but it was true for the company I worked for. Used to make ten brands of sump hose - the only difference was the bag we put it in and which fittings were included. The material, molds, and specs never varied.

"If you get a craving for some nice sugary betes for breakfast"

Absolutely not me (and most of the world) IRL. You Americans think desert is an acceptable choice for any meal. It's no wonder how your bodies are so fucked up.
Also, "betes"?

And the frosting is embarrassing

It's short for die-a-betes but the die part sounds scary.

Nope. Store brands are better IMO and half the price.

The decline of an empire, visualized.

trying to take them out of the toaster.

You.... you actually toast them?

I never have consumed them on a regular basis, but I don't think I've ever toasted them a single time. lol

I don't like my food raw. You should see how black my m... ok, that started to sound like a sex joke. But really I burn the shit out of meat.

the most toxic additives.

Food sold in the US or Europe, at least, does not have toxic additives. If you're scared of "chemicals", please for the love of the earth, educate yourself.

appeared as cheaper lower quality versions

They really never were. This was a reputation, yes, but it was not warranted. It's taken a hell of a long time for enough people to realize this.

Nothing significant has changed in the last couple of decades, at least. Maybe back into the 60s, 70s, 80s or so, I won't debate. But since the turn fo the century at a minimum, store brands almost always use a producer that produces for name brands. It's often literally the same product. At worst, it might be stuff that didn't quite make the name brand standards, or it might hvae a little less quality or something, but almost all of the time, it's the same thing.

There might be some exception - I certainly haven't tried the myriad of store brands for stores I haven't gone to, but i've been buying mostly store brands for quite a number of years now, and almost all the time, there's no difference.

Like one I can think of: Store-brand "Doritos" might have a bit less "cheese" on them. Or might have the same, depends. Most of the time it's the same thing, though.

Yeah maybe it's just Walmart specifically that shits the bed :P

Yeah... I'm talking about all those years you're skipping. Off-brands didn't used to be made on the same production lines. And since the off-brand pop tarts are much different and better, it seems they're still not.

Oh we know.

They are garbage.

You have your priorities, others have theirs…