I absolutely adore Pop Tarts! I eat them for breakfast,lunch,and dinner. I am utterly,undeniably,and irrevocably addicted. Nutrition be damned!!! Wait… This isn’t a story ,just a sad little rant. Sorry.

My kitchen almost caught fire once back in the 1980s, when I inadvertantly released the incredible pyrotechnic forces secretly locked inside each and every frosted Pop-Tart.

It was a day like any other.

I had risen, gone to the kitchen to prepare myself a breakfast, and decided to include a Pop-Tart. In this case, a frosted strawberry Pop-Tart.

It was that frosting that would prove to be my undoing.

I had turned my back on the toaster briefly. When I looked back, my toaster was on fire!

Flames were leaping out of it almost one foot high!!

Since the toaster was on the counter, practically right under the wooden counters, I immediately unplugged it and placed the flame-emitting appliance on the center of the kitchen floor.

This did not eliminate the danger. I wound up pouring baking soda on it, and that put it out.

Had I not been nearby, I have no doubt that the cabinets would have been at least scorched – and might have caught fire.

My knowledge of culinary sciences is extremely limited. I imagine the root cause was that the toaster temperature was set to high, and the frosted side was leaning against the support wires.

It turns out that the phenomenon of Stawberry Pop-Tart Blow Torches are a documented fact.

My advice to those who choose to engage in the potentially dangerous art of Pop-Tart cooking follow these guidelines.

1. Never set the toaster even close to high and, if your toaster has a Pop-Tart setting (my current one does) use it! You just need to warm the pastry. Anything else is waste at best and dangerous at worst.
2. Always avoid the frosted ones if you can, and if you must cook them – then exercise extreme caution and alertness when cooking them.
3. Never leave a frosted Pop-Tart cooking without an adult who is monitoring the toaster for signs of flame.
4. Never allow children to cook frosted Pop-Tarts without adult supervision.
5. Always make sure that there is nothing hanging or protruding directly above the toaster.
6. Unplug the toaster immediately upon seeing signs of flame (an orange plasma jetting upward) coming from the toaster.
7. Never throw water or any other liquid on an appliance that is turned on. Throw baking soda on it.
8. Never throw sugar on anything burning. Sugar burns. And it melts too. It is the sugar on the Pop-Tart frosting that is burning in the first place!

If your toaster does catch fire, you are probably going to have to buy a new toaster. The popup toasters are not particularly easy to clean inside, and any sugar or filling left inside will present a fire hazard.

Consult the hyperlink above to see just what a flaming Pop-Tart looks like. The flames are not exagerated in the photo. That is exactly what they look like. They are quite big relative to the size of the pastry itself.

Think of a frosted Pop-Tart as an edible fire-starter log for your kitchen. Because it will be one if you are not careful!

They only seem to carry the frosted pop-tarts at my grocery store. The regular ones have got to be slightly less bad for you.

I was a kid when these things were introduced. Blueberry was the first I ever tried. It came with a little Batman comic book, touting the original TV series.

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They taste good. I have never really taken a fancy to the _frosted ones, though.

The crust has a lot of fat in it and the filling is loaded with sugar. Adding frosting seems too over the top – giving them a whopping 200 calories per tart. That is more calories than a 12 ounce can of soda!

If you have a juicing machine at home and some fresh fruit, you can make a lot more nutritious breakfast. The energy you get from fresh juice will last longer. Plus, the juice will contain the natural enzymes that pasteurized juices do not have. A fruit-filled pop-tart is a pale shadow of that. Frosting them just adds insult to injury.