Jerry Seinfeld's 'Unfrosted': A Thrilling Tale of Competition and Creativity Behind the Creation of Pop-Tarts

Unique Points

• Jerry Seinfeld stars in Netflix movie 'Unfrosted' as Bob Cabana, a Kellogg executive.
• President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev get involved in the Breakfast Race.
• Melissa McCarthy plays a NASA scientist recruited by Bob to join the team trying to invent a fruit pastry before Post.

Accuracy

• Jerry Seinfeld stars in Netflix movie ‘Unfrosted’ as Bob Cabana, a Kellogg executive.
• The film is set in the early 1960s and depicts a rivalry between Kellogg and Post over producing breakfast cereals.

Deception (0%)

• This is one of the many inexplicable elements in Unfrosted – Grant plays Ravenscroft, who plays Tony the Tiger, but Snap, Crackle and Pop are depicted not as actors, but as individuals named Snap, Crackle and Pop. They seem to have no normal human alter egos; they’re never out of character.
• Late in the game, we get an extended ‘action’ sequence that is designed to satirize the Jan. 6 insurrection, and it’s so bad and poorly shot it’s as if everyone involved in the movie has just given up.
• To make matters more confusing, they interact with ‘real’ people such as Steve Schwinn, Jack LaLanne and Harold von Braunhunt the huckster known for gimmicks such as X-ray specs and Amazing Sea Monkeys. Why are those latter characters from other fields in a Pop-Tarts movie? Mainly so that Unfrosted can waste an inordinate amount of time on scenes that parody The Right Stuff (including a particularly tasteless joke about Gus Grissom).
• Unfrosted is so consistently awful it makes the aforementioned Flamin’ Hot seem like The Social Network.
• Jokes fall flat and hard, as when Edsel Kellogg reads the newspaper and says, ‘Ooh, Vietnam, that seems like a good idea.’ or when we’re subjected to an extended funeral scene in which a grieving widow doesn’t understand why all these breakfast cereal mascots are mourning her husband.
• I’m surprised that director/co-writer/producer/star Seinfeld, one of the sharpest and most observant comedic minds of his generation, didn’t halt production halfway through, call Time of Death and apologize to everyone for wasting their time.

Fallacies (15%)

• >The latest entry in his brand-name genre is Jerry Seinfeld's Netflix movie <u>Unfrosted</u>, an astonishingly unfunny, deeply weird, live-action cartoon that is so clear-the-room dreadful it almost plays like a horror movie.
• , >If there was a thing called the IMDB Witness Protection Program where you could get your name taken off the credits of a particular project, this would be that project.
• , >Seinfeld and his co-writers opted for a story that contains maybe 5% of the established, bare-bones story about the birth of the Pop-Tart, and uses that as the foundation for a garish, deeply unclever series of scenes.
• , >To make matters more confusing, they interact with <u>real</u> people such as Steve Schwinn (Jack McBrayer), Jack LaLanne (James Marsden) and Harold von Braunhunt (Thomas Lennon).
• , >Why are those latter characters from other fields in a Pop-Tarts movie? Mainly so that <u>Unfrosted</u> can waste an inordinate amount of time on scenes that parody The Right Stuff (including a particularly tasteless joke about Gus Grissom).

Bias (0%)

• Among Bob’s duties: overseeing the production of Kellogg’s TV commercials, with a criminally miscast Hugh Grant as a fastidious version of the legendary and deep-voiced Thurl Ravenscroft, who plays Tony the Tiger, and Kyle Mooney, Mikey Day and Drew Tarver as Snap, Crackle and Pop.
• For no reason whatsoever, we occasionally cut to clips of Walter Cronkite (Kyle Dunnigan) delivering the news, with Unfrosted callously turning Cronkite into a bumbling, booze-soaked fool with the mind of a child.
• Hugh Grant plays Thurl Ravenscroft, the real-life voice of Tony the Tiger. Netflix This is one of the many inexplicable elements in Unfrosted – Grant plays Ravenscroft, who plays Tony the Tiger, but Snap, Crackle and Pop are depicted not as actors, but as individuals named Snap, Crackle and Pop. They seem to have no normal human alter egos; they’re never out of character.
• If there was a thing called the IMDB Witness Protection Program where you could get your name taken off the credits of a particular project, this would be that project.
• I’m surprised that director/co-writer/producer/star Seinfeld, one of the sharpest and most observant comedic minds of his generation, didn’t halt production halfway through, call Time of Death and apologize to everyone for wasting their time.
• Late in the game, we get an extended action sequence that is designed to satirize the Jan. 6 insurrection, and it’s so bad and poorly shot it’s as if everyone involved in the movie has just given up.
• Melissa McCarthy, Jerry Seinfeld and Jim Gaffigan play Kellogg’s executives on a mission to develop a toaster pastry in ‘Unfrosted.’ Netflix We experienced an explosion of Corporate Origin Story movies in 2023, from the four-star titles ‘Air’ and ‘Blackberry’ to the creative and inventive Tetris and the appropriately silly and funny The Beanie Bubble, to the formulaic Flamin’ Hot. The latest entry in his brand-name genre is Jerry Seinfeld’s Netflix movie Unfrosted, an astonishingly unfunny, deeply weird, live-action cartoon that is so clear-the-room dreadful it almost plays like a horror movie.
• Melissa McCarthy plays a NASA scientist recruited by Bob to join the Kellogg’s team that is trying to invent a fruit pastry before Post can get its similar product on shelves.
• Still, as terrible as all of that is, nothing can prepare you for a subplot involving some sort of live and very creepy Sea Monkey Ravioli creature.
• Time and again, weird and off-putting triumphs over inventive and endearing. The framing device for Unfrosted has Seinfeld’s Bob Cabana seated next to a runaway kid in a diner and telling him ‘the real story’ of the birth of the Pop-Tart, ‘in the early 60s, [when] the American morning was defined by milk and cereal.’ Cue the flashback to our main story, which is set in a Don’t Worry Darling-looking version of Battle Creek, Michigan.
• To make matters more confusing, they interact with ‘real’ people such as Steve Schwinn (Jack McBrayer), Jack LaLanne (James Marsden) and Harold von Braunhunt (Thomas Lennon), the huckster known for gimmicks such as X-ray specs and Amazing Sea Monkeys. Why are those latter characters from other fields in a Pop-Tarts movie? Mainly so that Unfrosted can waste an inordinate amount of time on scenes that parody The Right Stuff (including a particularly tasteless joke about Gus Grissom). We also get inside gags referencing The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. Timely!
• Turns out Bob is a top young (youngish?) Kellogg’s executive who reports directly to Edsel Kellogg III (Jim Gaffigan), a buffoonish blowhard who is locked in an ongoing duel with Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer), as each company strives to win the Breakfast Race, which eventually becomes so heated that President John F. Kennedy (Bill Burr) and Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev (Dean Norris) get involved.
• Whereas Air et al., were fictionalized to varying degrees but still had some connection to true events, Seinfeld and his co-writers opted for a story that contains maybe 5% of the established, bare-bones story about the birth of the Pop-Tart, and uses that as the foundation for a garish, deeply unclever series of scenes that play like didn’t-make-the-cut sketches from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

Site Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Author Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Unique Points

• Jerry Seinfeld's directorial debut ‘Unfrosted’ is about the Pop-Tarts origin story.
• Pop-Tarts responded to Seinfeld’s movie with a satirical short film on YouTube.
• Seinfeld confronted Kelman P. Gasworth, the President of Pop-Tarts, in the short film for using his characters without permission.
• Gasworth threatened to take Seinfeld’s characters in return for using Pop-Tarts without permission.
• The short film revealed that Schmoopie, Jackie Chiles and the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld were now owned by Pop-Tarts.

Accuracy

No Contradictions at Time Of Publication

Deception (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Fallacies (95%)

• ]They're my characters now, Mr. Seinfeld.[/
• Do you think maybe that's why you're here?

Bias (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Site Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Author Conflicts Of Interest (0%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Unique Points

• Jerry Seinfeld directs, co-writes, and headlines a new Netflix comedy ‘Unfrosted’ about the creation of Pop-Tarts.
• The film takes place in Battle Creek, Michigan, home to both Kelloggs and Post.
• Edsel Kellogg III from Kelloggs is thrilled with Bob Cabanas success at making their company the king of cereals.
• Posts CEO Marjorie Post yearns to best her adversary and create a revolutionizing handheld breakfast item.
• Bob recruits Donna Stankowski to crack the code before Post can beat them to store shelves.
• The film casts the proceedings as a prolonged riff on America and the Soviet Unions competition to reach the Moon.

Accuracy

• Edsel Kellogg III from Kelloggs is thrilled with Bob Cabana’s success at making their company the king of cereals.
• Post’s CEO Marjorie Post yearns to best her adversary and create a revolutionizing handheld breakfast item.
• The film casts the proceedings as a prolonged riff on America and the Soviet Union’s competition to reach the Moon.
• Notable individuals in the film include Quaker’s Isaiah Lamb, Chef Boy Ardee, Tom Carvel, Steve Schwinn, Harold Von Braunhut, and Jack Lalanne.

Deception (30%)

• Some of this is based in fact and the rest of it is loopy fiction... That additionally goes for Kelloggs’ rivalry with Post...
• The star is whining about how comedians aren’t allowed to be edgy anymore.
• Accepting that formidable challenge is Jerry Seinfeld, who directs, co-writes, and headlines Unfrosted... It’s an amusing trifle of a feature, generating more mild smiles than outright laughs.

Fallacies (75%)

• ]They come for the goo,

Bias (80%)

• accepting that formidable challenge is Jerry Seinfeld, who directs, co-writes, and headlines Unfrosted, a new Netflix comedy... It's an amusing trifle of a feature, generating more mild smiles than outright laughs. Superior to Seinfeld’s prior cinematic offering, 2007’s animated Bee Movie... There’s nothing particularly awful about it, but there’s also very little that’s memorable

Site Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Author Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Unique Points

• Jerry Seinfeld directed and starred in a movie called 'Unfrosted' about the creation of Pop-Tarts.
• The film is based on the real-life rivalry between Kellogg’s and Post companies in Battle Creek, Michigan.
• Kellogg’s, represented by Bob Cabana (Jerry Seinfeld), was leading in the cereal market while Post was struggling.
• To create a successful pastry product, Kellogg’s assembled a team of inventors including Jack LaLanne, Steve Schwinn, Tom Carvel, Chef Boyardee, Harold von Braunhut and an IBM UNIVAC computer.
• The movie frames itself as a thriller with Bob taking meetings with South American sugar lords and the milk union threatening to kidnap him.
• JFK agreed to intervene in the conflict between Kellogg’s and Post.

Accuracy

• To create a successful pastry product, Kellogg’s assembled a team of inventors including Jack LaLanne, Steve Schwinn, Tom Carvel, Chef Boyardee and an IBM UNIVAC computer.
• President John F. Kennedy agreed to intervene in the conflict between Kellogg’s and Post.

Deception (30%)

• The entire movie is a put-on, a wackazoid tall tale, a comedy that uses the breakfast wars as the jumping-off point for a high-camp exercise in nostalgic lunacy.
• I bring all this up because Unfrosted treats the origin story of the Pop-Tart with such a derisive, backhand flippancy that it's not at all clear what Jerry and his team of screenwriter-producers actually think of the Pop-Tart. Is the movie a goof because they're making fun of what a mediocre product it was? Perhaps.
• Yet if the memory of Pop-Tarts actually strikes a chord of Proustian reverence in Jerry – if it’s his madeleine stuffed with fake-fruit chemicals – then why make such a misanthropic satire of it?

Fallacies (85%)

• ]The Pop-Tart was a [product of the future that seemed stuck in the past], like astronaut food.[
• It was bland when untoasted (though a lot of folks ate them that way). Once you toasted them, the hot fruit filling had a soothing tasty tang, but the rectangular pastry was still cardboard pie crust. It wasn’t awful, but it's not like biting into it gave you a rush of joy.[
• To create a pastry product that can beat Post’s, Kellogg’s puts Bob together with his old partner, Stan (Melissa McCarthy), who’s working for NASA, and the two assemble a team of inventors who are like a Mount Rushmore of cheesy [1960s brands].[

Bias (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Site Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Author Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication