In 1964, the Kellogg Company introduced Pop-Tarts in Battle Creek, Michigan, as a pre-frosted, shelf-stable filled pastry that could be eaten straight from the package or heated in a toaster, creating an entirely new category of sweet breakfast convenience food. The product was developed in response to Post's announcement of a similar product and was rushed to market with heavy advertising, selling out initially and creating demand that took months to fulfill. Pop-Tarts combined the sweetness of a dessert with the convenience of a packaged snack, blurring the boundary between breakfast food and candy that would become characteristic of the sugary cereal and pastry products critics would later identify as junk food.

Pop-Tarts emerged during the pop art movement that profoundly influenced poetry, with figures like Frank O'Hara finding poetic significance in branded consumer products and the aesthetics of mass production. The product's deliberately artificial colors and flavors, its packaging design, and its name's playful reference to the pop art movement itself made Pop-Tarts a fitting symbol for the poetry of consumer culture that developed in the 1960s and beyond, appearing in contemporary poems that use the pastry to explore nostalgia, artificiality, and the childhood consumption experiences that shape adult identities.