Spider-Man Pop-Tarts
Portrait of a bad decision I made
I had a hankering for Pop-Tarts, and I was at Grocery Outlet. I wish there was a better, more poetic reason that i ended up with a box full of Spider-Man: Far From Home Pop-Tarts, but this is the core reasoning. There were other kinds there, of course. There was a little box of chocolate ones, but I wanted fruit ones. I think there were like… I don’t know, grape ones, or something. I swear to god, I didn’t buy Spider-Man: Far From Home pop tarts because I like Spider-Man in general, and Spider-Man: Far From Home in particular although, that’s a pair of true facts, right there. He has cool powers and a lot of relateable life stresses, and it’s a fun globehopping adventure, an elegant mixture of superhero fun and teenage rom-com, and Jake Gyllenhall really brings it in the role of Mysterio. I bought them because I wanted pop tarts, I was at the place that sells old boxes of Pop-Tarts, and this box of Pop-Tarts was the only one that fulfilled the craving I had while I was standing in the Pop-Tart isle on that particular day. I swear.
I have, on occasion, thought that maybe I should start making my own Pop-Tarts. Just some pastry dough, a rolling pin, and some filling is all you need. Maybe I make a bunch, then freeze them. Maybe, when there’s a party, I bring a bunch of homemade Pop-Tarts. “Wow, these are good,” people will say, gathered around the toaster. “It’s like a Pop-Tart, but… elevated.” I start to do this all the time. Sooner or later, the buzz gets out, and I buy a food cart, where I sell my homemade poptarts. They have exotic, seasonal fillings. Guava. Passionfruit. Quince. Hops. Maybe something called a “Cumin Tart,” a Pop-Tart with a cumin-flavoured-jelly on the inside. It would really take off, if you ask me.
Look at these delicious, toasty boys. One has a picture of Spider-Man’s face, but with a kind of graffiti attitude, because he’s an urban badass fella and kids (The primary audience for these Pop-Tarts, along with hefty 30-Year Olds, standing in the Grocery Outlet after working out for the first time in a while.) really love that. The other one, frankly, is mysterious to me. It looks like a key card you swipe to get in the Spider-Lounge or something, the place where Spider-Man keeps all of his suits, a narrative construct that IS NOT in Spider-Man: Far From Home, but does appear in Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, although you might recall that the entry tool for that particular shed, which appears around halfway through the movie is a key, and not a card. This is all to say, I don’t know why this weird card is on these Pop-Tarts, at all. It doesn’t even really share an aesthetic attitude with any Spider-Man worth noting. It’s just a card with a Spider on it.
When I was taking these pictures, I became obsessed with a kind of unnatural sheen the Pop-Tarts were throwing off. You can kind of see is, here, but…
You can REALLY see it, here. What the fuck is that? Why is the light from the oven header catching the thing I’m about to eat like this? Why is the matting from this food printing compromised, and why is it manifesting like an oil slick, sitting on top of Spider-Man’s eye? Clearly, the whole thing is supposed to look like the… rest of the thing, I think, but there’s some flaw, somewhere in the process that is expressing itself as an unnatural, or maybe “Even more unnatural” sheen? It’s not poisonous, of course, I ate the Pop-Tart and I’m not poisoned in any apparent way, but it’s clearly wrong. What’s going on that made this flaw, this error, this hideous reflection of light starting back at me over grafitti Spider-Man’s eyes?
Anyway they were pretty good Pop-Tarts. I ate them over the span of not-enough days. 7/10. (Squirrel picture unrelated, though it might resemble me eating a Pop-Tart.)