The man credited with inventing the Pop-Tart has died.
William Post died Saturday in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was 96, according to the Battle Creek Enquirer.
According to the Enquirer, Post was the plant manager of the Keebler Company in the early 1960s, when executives from Kellogg’s asked if he thought it would be possible for Keebler to create a shelf-stable toaster pastry.
“It is at this juncture that Bill is often credited for having ‘invented’ the Pop Tart,” Post’s obituary reads. “To be accurate, however, Bill would say, ‘I assembled an amazing team that developed Kellogg’s concept of a shelf-stable toaster pastry into a fine product that we could bring to market in the span of just four months.’”
The executives described a product that looks like the Pop-Tart of today. They told Post they wanted something “like a piece of pie, the shape of a slice of bread, fork marks around the edge, two pieces of dough with some filling in” to put in a toaster.
Post took the idea and turned it into a real product, according to Kellanova, the company that owns Pop-Tarts.
Pop-Tarts debuted in 1964 with four original flavors: strawberry, blueberry, brown sugar cinnamon and apple-currant.
The company said it sold around 3 billion of the pastries in 2022.
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