Strawberry, a humanoid Pop-Tarts mascot, emerged from inside a giant blue toaster shortly before kickoff, waving to the crowd in Orlando.
But the 31,111 fans in half-empty Camping World Stadium had been given an inkling that Strawberry would meet a macabre ending, as ESPN’s Anish Shroff explained to the viewers at home.
“Here’s the sad part of the story,” he said. “After the game, he will be devoured. He will die. And he will be his own last meal.”
It was Dec. 28, 2023, the night of the first-ever Pop-Tarts Bowl, featuring No. 19 NC State vs. No. 25 Kansas State in one of the many bowl games that populate ABC/ESPN’s airwaves between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Nearly all of them bear the logo of some goofy sponsor. But no goofy sponsor had ever before staged a ritual sacrifice on live television.
After Kansas State’s 28-19 victory, Strawberry’s death was nigh. As giddy Wildcats players chanted, “Toast That Mascot!” he climbed to the top of the giant toaster, waving and holding a sign that read “Dreams Really Do Come True.” With the stadium P.A. blasting Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff,” he descended inside.
Here we are… the edible mascot in the Pop-Tarts Bowl.. pic.twitter.com/0XgKGoXseS
— PJ Green (@ByPJGreen) December 29, 2023
“The Kansas State players had been told the mascot was edible, but they may have thought the costume itself was edible — which it was not,” said college football writer Rodger Sherman, who was on the field filming the scene. “There was just this wave of, is this thing actually happening? And why is it happening?”
Moments later, an oversized, edible Pop-Tart with a winking eye on its frosting slid through an opening and down a chute at field level, where Wildcats coach Chris Klieman and game MVP Avery Johnson were waiting to take their bites. With confetti blasting, one player after another came up to grab another piece, leaving behind a strawberry carcass with only its right eye intact.
“At that moment,” said Sherman, “I had no idea (the Pop-Tarts Bowl) was going to break through and become the most well-known bowl game out there besides the Rose Bowl.”
That first postgame sacrifice only aired online, but the explosion was immediate. Pop-Tarts amassed several billion impressions in the ensuing days and became a trending topic on X. It generated countless memes. A phenomenon was born.
— no context college football (@nocontextcfb) December 29, 2023
A year later, the Pop-Tarts Bowl returned — now pitting three flavors competing for the right to be eaten — and this time, ABC made sure to stay on-air for the full postgame ceremony following Iowa State’s win against Miami. Some 8 million people watched it live.
The Pop-Tarts Bowl’s absurdist pageantry has been the best thing to happen to bowl season in many years. This is its origin story.
The game now known as the Pop-Tarts Bowl launched in 1990 as the Blockbuster Bowl, first played in Miami before moving to Orlando in 2001. Over three decades, it has changed title sponsors nine times, from the MicronPC Bowl to the Champs Sports Bowl to the Russell Athletic Bowl.
There were just 19 bowls in 1990, and the sport had no playoff system or national championship game. Making any bowl was a big deal. Today, there are 42, all but six of which exist outside of the College Football Playoff, and their prestige has gradually eroded over the decades. TV ratings have remained strong, but in-person attendance has declined.
What is now the Pop-Tarts Bowl pits teams from the ACC and Big 12. Historically it has seen attendance spike whenever Florida State plays (61,520 spectators in 2022 for FSU-Oklahoma) but generally struggles to reach an attendance of 40,000.
“Bowls were conceived as a tourism and promotional concept,” said Matt Repchak, chief marketing officer for Florida Citrus Sports. “The people in the front row in body paint are going to be at every game, and 33 percent of our bowl audience is regional. But you’ve got to capture a lot of people in between who may say, well, we would have loved to be in the Playoff, but we’re not. So let’s go to Orlando.”
Increasingly, bowls are leaning into marketing with their sponsorships to make what might otherwise feel like a consolation prize more appealing.
“Even if you separate the Playoff from the whole list of 42 bowl games, 41 of us are not the Rose Bowl,” said Repchak. “It’s an exhibition game, as most postseason bowls are. How do we make it fun and entertaining?”
The first taste of that strategy came in 2021, during the game’s brief run as the Cheez-It Bowl. Social media got a kick out of Prince Chedward, a regal mascot who sits on a throne wearing a crown over his cheese-wheel head.
Prince Chedward is the leader in the clubhouse for bowl mascots. #CheezItBowl pic.twitter.com/DeeTuDptv2
— Wes Reynolds (@WesReynolds1) December 29, 2021
After three seasons, Cheez-It took over sponsorship of the Citrus Bowl and looked to offload its other bowl. (Cheez-It and Pop-Tarts are owned by Kellanova, a spinoff of Kellogg’s.) Heidi Ray, senior director of brand marketing for Pop-Tarts, received a call in April 2023 asking if Pop-Tarts was interested in taking over the sponsorship.
“It’s got to have a big impact and a big lift to justify spending all of that money on one moment in time,” Ray said.
Ray did not disclose how much it cost, but sponsorships for a bowl at that tier range from $1 million-$3 million, two people with knowledge of the industry said. While not as expensive as a traditional ad campaign, it comes with more risk. Pop-Tarts ultimately said yes, in large part because a football game fit nicely with its broader strategy of marketing the breakfast staple as a snack food.
Kellanova enlisted one of its outside agencies, Weber-Shandwick, to devise ideas for the game. By 2023, the upstart Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte had gained viral buzz for its postgame mayonnaise bath of the winning coach, with the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl (Frosted Flakes), Famous Idaho Potato Bowl (French fries) and others invoking similar rituals.
PJ Fleck got an honorary mayo bath after Minnesota won the Duke’s Mayo Bowl 🔥
Who was pouring the mayonnaise? None other than the game’s mascot, Flava Flav.
🎥 @espn | H/T @cjzero pic.twitter.com/WiejE5DDgA
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) January 4, 2025
“Once we did that announcement, we saw people on Twitter posting, ‘I bet they do a coach bath,’” said Weber-Shandwick creative director Burke Boggio-Hair. “We took that as a challenge: All right, hold my Pop-Tarts.”
It was senior art director Nikki Mendez who first uttered the words “edible mascot” in a video brainstorming meeting. Initially, her colleagues had a laugh and moved on. But they kept coming back to it.
“Every time that idea was presented (internally), no matter to whom, there was always a giggle,” said Weber Shandwick executive Jeffrey Spivock. “But my honest-to-God initial reaction was, they (the Pop-Tarts team) are never gonna buy it.”
The formal slide deck presentation to Pop-Tarts on Aug. 4 of that year read: “We’ll create a mascot born to be eaten by the winning team. The end-of-game ‘bath’ moment will forever be turned on its head. It’ll become the moment every player, coach, fan and Pop-Tarts dreams of. To the victors go the pastry.”
“I remember saying to Burke, wait a second,” said Ray. “You want to introduce the world to this mascot and then kill him?”
Ultimately, she and her team loved it. And they realized a way to make sure the stunt was not seen as too morbid: “They actually want to be sacrificed. They’re fighting to be sacrificed.”
The concept was one thing. The execution was another. How exactly does one feed a human mascot to a football team? The giant toaster being developed for Strawberry’s pregame intro received a late add-on feature: a slot on the front with a small slide.
“We added in the special effects, like pyrotechnics, Co2 cannons and music cues, to make the moment even more of a spectacle,” said Brian Gabriel, another Weber-Shandwick exec who had been a professional stage magician as a teenager.
Well into December, only a small circle of people even knew what the mascot looked like, much less the plans to incinerate him. Details kept evolving even days before the game, like when the person playing the mascot suggested their “Dreams Really Do Come True” sign.
And then, moments before the main event, with Strawberry finally set to descend, a child running across the field tripped the extension cord powering the toaster. Gabriel noticed and dove to reconnect it just in time.
“The end-of-game sacrifice moment is like cutting the nets in the (NCAA) tournament. The last guy on the bench still gets a piece of the mascot,” said Boggio-Hair. “It makes us all feel good about sacrificing a giant anthropomorphic pastry at midfield in the middle of a bowl game on live TV.”
As for how the Pop-Tart himself felt being eaten? The Athletic requested an interview with the performer in the mascot costume but was told, “Our Pop-Tarts mascot is a Pop-Tart. It does not speak, nor do the performers inside.”
The impact of that moment went well beyond organizers’ wildest expectations, generating four billion-plus online impressions. In the eight weeks after the game, Kellanova sold 21 million more Pop-Tarts than it had in the eight weeks beforehand. By the fall, the Pop-Tarts Bowl mascot had become a popular Halloween costume.
Lou Kovacs, president of marketing for Octagon North America, has worked with New Year’s Six bowl sponsors Allstate, Vrbo and PlayStation. Of the spectacle, he said: “They turned what could have easily been a forgettable lower-tier bowl and turned it into this cultural moment.”
The 2023 Pop-Tarts Bowl had barely ended before its creators began brainstorming for 2024. The public would be expecting something even bigger.
First, they announced there would not be one edible mascot, but three competing to be eaten — frosted hot fudge sundae, frosted wild berry and a mystery flavor later revealed to be the previously discontinued frosted cinnamon roll.
Next up: A new trophy, designed by GE, now featuring a functioning toaster. The trophy appeared on Good Morning America the day before the game and was recently exhibited at the College Football Hall of Fame.
And then came the game, now featuring NCAA-approved sprinkles on the sideline; ESPN sideline reporter Cole Cubelic donning a Pop-Tarts costume throughout the game; an in-game resurrection of Strawberry atop one of the scoreboards; and the three new mascots introducing themselves by busting out from foil wrappings.
“We were like, yeah, they should rip open the foil,” said Boggio-Hair. “Did I know one of the mascots was going to perform it as a striptease? No.”
In a thrilling game, Miami and Iowa State traded eight first-half touchdowns, after which ‘Canes star Cam Ward controversially sat out the second half. In the final minutes, Iowa State’s Rocco Becht led a 15-play touchdown drive to go up 42-41, then the Cyclones sealed the win on a Hail Mary interception.
On stage, Ray handed Becht the MVP trophy, then watched as he chose the newly relaunched Cinnamon Roll to be eaten. After the edible version came down the chute, Becht began flinging pieces to his teammates like an NBA champion popping a champagne bottle.
As Ray’s colleague Jenny Lindquist watched from across the field, she began receiving excited texts from family members. She began shouting and frantically motioning to the stage. “THEY AIRED IT! … ABC!”
The 2024 Pop-Tarts Bowl averaged 6.8 million viewers, second most of any non-Playoff bowl. The broadcast peaked at 8 million — during the trophy ceremony.
“For ABC to stay on our game and air that moment before going into the next bowl game,” said Lindquist, “was —it sounds silly — but almost an honor for us.”
For years, bowls have been fighting to remain relevant amid Playoff expansion, NFL opt-outs, interim coaches and the December portal window. Last season, though, ABC/ESPN’s 33 non-Playoff bowls saw a 14 percent year-over-year increase in viewership. The Pop-Tarts Bowl itself scored that game’s highest rating since 2008.
Many factors may have contributed, including a carryover bump from the new mid-December first-round Playoff games. But now, these oft-labeled “meaningless” bowls are leaning into the fun and irreverence.
“This has to be part of the postseason equation going forward,” said Florida Citrus Sports CEO Steve Hogan. “ It’s been neat to see such an audience of people outside college football tune in. It invites more people to be college football fans.”
The bowl and the brand are in active conversations about extending their partnership past this coming season. In the meantime, plans are well underway for the 2025 game.
Said Ray, “We have plenty — plenty — to choose from.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Peter Joneleit, David Rosenblum / Icon Sportswire / Getty Images)
