Inside the ever-evolving wild ideas of the Pop-Tarts Bowl

Around 7 PM ET on Saturday, the eyes of college football will be focused on a pastry.

Last year, the inaugural Pop-Tarts Bowl (formerly the Cheez-It Bowl, Camping World Bowl, and so on) made waves — but not for its action on the field. It was the post-game ceremonies that grabbed everyone’s attention.

After the Kansas State Wildcats were crowned the bowl winners, the usual postgame traditions followed. Wildcats coach Chris Klieman received a Gatorade bath. The players walked to midfield where they donned Pop-Tarts Bowl Champions T-shirts. Quarterback Avery Johnson was named the game’s most valuable player. A trophy was hoisted.

Then an oversized Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tart climbed atop an oversized toaster and descended to its toasted doom. Seconds later, sure enough, an edible, oversized Pop-Tart emerged from the bottom opening of the toaster. Johnson and Klieman enjoyed bites. Pleased with what they saw, the bowl’s planners set about making next year’s edition even more over-the-top.

Does that sound weird? There is video evidence to match the story.

In a world where college football bowls constantly jostle for attention in an ever-changing sport, outlandishness works.

As the Pop-Tarts Bowl began charting a course for its first game under the new title sponsor, a willingness to break the mold and push boundaries quickly emerged. The goal would be to find ways to be unconventional while still honoring some of college football’s classic rituals.

“Going into last year, the strategy was really ‘How do we tackle traditional college football rituals and turn them on their head?'” Pop-Tart’s senior director of brand marketing Heidi Ray told ESPN. “It’s true to the DNA of the (Pop-Tarts) brand that we’re breaking convention.”

The game’s now famous Pop-Tart mascot is perhaps the best example of mixing something that could be different from the bowl with classic college football tradition. Dozens of universities have beloved mascots to help pump up fans on game day—why not give the game a mascot, too? While far from some of college football’s scarier costumes, the frosted strawberry Pop-Tart proved a hit, and its popularity exceeded what game organizers even imagined.

“We were excited about (the mascot),” Ray said. “We didn’t foresee the world losing its mind the way it did when it was introduced and then ultimately when it was sacrificed.”

Not content to just enjoy the success of last season’s mascot, Pop-Tarts looked to build on what had already worked heading into 2024. Frosted Strawberries (and its subsequent cinematic roast) were a smash hit. Ray and the bowl’s answer?

“Let’s triple the fun and bring three.”

Join this year’s trio of mascots, where the game’s MVP gets the honor of choosing which of the three flavors to toast.

The same logic of building on past successes applies to the game’s new trophy, which now doubles as a functional toaster. The first Pop-Tarts Bowl trophy had a sleek silver football design, complete with two slots at the top to hold a few Pop-Tarts like a toaster would. However, it invited a natural question: Could it actually toast the cakes?

That version of the trophy could not. But when the meetings for the next match began, the question of how to make the trophy work was immediately raised.

“We were really excited and proud that people saw (the trophy) … but the immediate second question everyone had was, ‘Is that a real toaster?'” Florida Citrus Sports Chief Marketing Officer Matt Repchak told ESPN. “So when we started planning for 2024, one of the first things we said in the brainstorming session was, ‘I think we all agree that this needs to be a functional toaster.’

“There’s a giggle when you tell someone you’re trying to put a toaster inside a football on top of a trophy. But then very quickly it was like, ‘OK, this is semi-serious, let’s do this.’ .”

Social media strategy has also proven crucial in the Pop-Tarts Bowl’s continued establishment in the postseason scene. Going hand in hand with the game’s various distinctive features is a willingness to relentlessly promote these features in unique ways.

Shortly after the game’s functional toaster trophy was revealed, the bowl’s X account was ready to show off the unlikely hardware, posting a parody trailer of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” complete with the tagline of #Poppenheimer.

“Now I’ve become Trophy, toaster with cakes.” #Poppenheimer #PopTartsBowl pic.twitter.com/oq4pbQfqGN

— Pop-Tarts Bowl (@PopTartsBowl) 16 December 2024

“We had good sound clips, good references … things that feel tied to what’s in pop culture,” Repchak said. “You approach your social media strategy (as) this is another platform for people to engage with the game.

“Last year, many people found out that Pop-Tarts sponsored a game when they saw that trophy for the first time … even more people found out that Pop-Tarts was involved in college football when they couldn’t avoid the memes on Instagram the day before the game and the day after the game.”

Needless to say, college football fans online have embraced what the Pop-Tarts Bowl has to offer. The bowl game currently has 37.8K followers on X — and counting — and has the second-highest number of followers of any non-New Year’s Six Bowl game, second only to mayo bath pioneer Duke’s Mayo Bowl. In fact, the Mayo Bowl, Pop-Tarts Bowl and Citrus Bowl — also powered by FCS Sports — are the only non-NY6 games to boast over 30,000 followers on X.

Regardless of the outcome on Saturday or the bowl’s follower count, anything feels possible for the Pop-Tarts Bowl going forward. Whether it’s further expansion of mascot ranks, new trophy features or some other unseen innovation, it’s hard to rule anything out once bowl season next December rolls around. Just take it from Repchak.

“We haven’t shown our full hands yet.”