Mainstays, icons, the A team: every brand’s got ’em, whether they’re flavors or sub-brands.
For Quaker cereal it’s Cap’n Crunch (and maybe Life). General Mills has Cheerios, Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch to do the bulk of its flavor licensing work. Post’s are arguably Honey Bunches and Pebbles, which is, itself, a two-faced Janus of Fruity & Cocoa. Likewise, Kellogg’s translates to Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops, plus Pop-Tarts, too.
As above, so below. If brand-level marketing has to tick certain option boxes, so too should a peripheral Pop-Tarts product have to do justice to what I’m calling The Big Four. Pop-Tarts’ finest. We got the higher ups in Bites form, as well as Chocolatey Fudge—which is a quasi-quintessential Pop-Tarts variety alongside Cookies & Creme.
But we’ve heard nothing about #3 & #4, S’Mores & Wild Berry. They complete this sacred quartet by further balancing rich and fruity sweetness.
No, instead of going with a proper, albeit unberried, wild card flavor like Hot Fudge Sundae or a Gone Nutty! variety, we got Confetti Cupcake Pop-Tarts Bites. Well, now it’s just Confetti Cake. Whether this was meant to be a symbolic instance of macro- vs. microcosm or not, one thing’s for certain: Confetti Cupcake Pop-Tarts were never that good to begin with. Certainly not Bites material. Heck, If I wanted a handful of bite-sized compound sugar bombs, I’d spread Cool Whip between some Frosted Animal Cookies.
But I’ve whined enough. I’ll pop open a pouch with an open mind, and give these angel-cake devils their due.
If I were to be extremely generous to Confetti Cake Pop-Tarts Bites, I could call them Pizza Roll-style Dunkaroos, or Inverted Lofthouse Cookies. But neither title would quite do justice to its namesake treat, as these Bites adopt a similar taste palate—that of crumbly buttercream batter—but it’s a bit of a hollow adaptation.
Because of the minuscule medium it operates in, each Confetti Cake Pop-Tart Bite can’t maintain the careful crust-to-frosted-filling balance that makes a Confetti Cupcake Pop-Tart worth it as an occasional ‘simply sweet’ delight—and even then, only when the other options are vegan Fudge Stripes and stale store-brand Nilla Wafers. Any subtle biscuity goodness a Confetti Cake Pop-Tarts Bite may have had is erased by the sheer potency of the colorless nectar it encapsulates.
Which isn’t to say that the filling is bad—it’s like corn syrup mixed with condensed milk and churned with just egg whites into a colorless, candied custard. It’s tasty, but there’s little depth to each Bite beyond “a momentary tongue-suplex of sugar,’ so even by the end of a small pouch of Confetti Cake Pop-Tarts Bites, it feels like I’ve been through some Wonka punishment for tapping the factory’s Funfetti Maples. In other words: oversweetened.
If you share Confetti Cake Pop-Tarts Bites with another person, it might be worth the no-brainer novelty. But with the size of the boxes these come in? You’re honestly better off with any other flavor in the Bites line. Strawberry, Cinnamon Brown Sugar, and Chocolate Fudge are each taste bud-sinking wells of flavor compared to these shallow Confetti Cakes, and if all else fails, I already let slip my hitherto top-secret recipe for Circus Sandwiches.
Come to think of it, that’s a cereal adaptation I’d proudly put my face on.
The Bowl: Confetti Cake Pop-Tarts Bites
The Breakdown: Little vanillin bursts of ooey-gooey glucose don’t have enough re-plate value to overcome their blandly pastried vehicle’s unnecessary and geometrically constrained existence.
The Bottom Line: 5.5 groves of Nougat Birches out of 10