- The Pop-Tarts Bowl occurred Thursday between the Kansas State Wildcats and the NC State Wolfpack.
- It culminated in not just a trophy but in the players eating a human-sized Pop-Tart.
- The spectacle was absurd, but its rampant success means other bowls may follow suit in odd ways.
A human-sized toaster pastry mascot obsessed with its own mortality stole the show at a college football bowl game Thursday evening, and it could lead to even more ridiculousness in American sporting events.
Kansas State took on NC State in the Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando, Florida, and while a football game certainly occurred, what happened between the whistles is not what anyone's going to remember down the line.
Instead, the antics of a six-foot Pop-Tart smiling and waving to crowds in its final moments before death are what'll be etched in the hearts and minds of college football fans for years to come.
As wildly thrilling as it was, there was a bit of confusion at the start of the event from some of those in attendance. Rodger Sherman, a college football journalist, noted online that he was unsure if it was couth or not to eat one of the sugary pastries in front of the mascot, itself.
The answer? As Pop-Tarts made abundantly clear throughout the night, yes, apparently a Pop-Tart's biggest dream is the sweet embrace of death by mastication.
I asked if it was offensive to eat a Pop-Tart in front of the @PopTartsBowl mascot and then its handler yelled out “ITS THEIR DREAM” and then the mascot grabbed a Pop-Tart out of my hand and started force-feeding it to me while making soft grunting noises pic.twitter.com/PaCDY6mzu3
— Rodger Sherman (@rodger) December 29, 2023It didn't end there.
After Kansas State won, an enormous toaster was rolled onto the field to ceremoniously wave goodbye to the beloved Pop-Tarts mascot as it cheerfully held a sign that read, "Dreams really do come true" and slowly descended into one of the toasting slots on top.
Soon after, a massive Pop-Tart emerged from the bottom of the toaster: the victory feast was set.
Wildcats players quickly dove into the sugar-filled pastry, tearing it apart like a school of starved piranhas. Minutes later, all that remained was the mascot's uneaten left eye.
Leave no crumbs. pic.twitter.com/JNEjHCUXXM
— Pop-Tarts Bowl (@PopTartsBowl) December 29, 2023After such an insane course of events, inevitably, the marketing teams for the 2024 bowl games are already trying to come up with versions of their own.
There is already a rich history of mascots getting into shenanigans — Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty became notorious following its unorthodox antics — but the Pop Tart seems like something new, a frontier of mascot behavior that has been nevertheless breached.
Why not a giant orange for the Orange Bowl that gets juiced on live television and sprayed over the winners circa the old-school Nickelodeon slime era? Who's against peeling, mashing, and serving a human-sized potato mascot for the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl? Is anyone opposed to flying in the aging UK punk band for the Cure Bowl?
Alright, the last one's a bit of a stretch but the point remains: If there's one takeaway from last night's Pop-Tarts Bowl, it's that bowl games — and perhaps American sporting as a whole — are set to become wackier than ever moving forward.
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