Pop-Tarts Pop-Up Store

How ironic that a store dedicated to Pop-Tarts -- of which I am indisputably the biggest fan in the world -- would open on the same day that I would blog about an all-rice-pudding operation downtown. ("Rice, Rice, Baby" is the best name upgrade I've heard yet. Nice work, Stephen H!) I'm going to be working in Times Square again tomorrow, so will definitely check out the Pastry Palace in person. But having grown up in Detroit, I'm concerned that it might not be able to live up to the magical tours of the Kellogg's factory in Battle Creek I went on as a kid, where the image of hundreds of the perfect pastries coming down the conveyor belt to be frosted still warmly toasts in my head. (God, I wish they'd bring back the chocolate with vanilla frosting -- which were always hard to come by, but are now completely discontinued.)

Oddly enough, everything I've read about Pop-Tarts World, as the Times Square store is called, sounds pretty awful: mixing and matching flavors in one box sounds sacrilegious to me (EVERYONE knows that when you're in the mood for Cherry, you ONLY want Cherry!), and this whole Pop-Tart "sushi" -- made from a combination of three fruit varieties rolled together in a fruit wrap and sliced to look like a sushi roll -- and "Ants on a Log" -- celery with peanut butter, sprinkled with wild grape Pop-Tarts -- both sound disgusting. I like that Pop-Tarts are being celebrated -- the store will be there until January, at which time Kellogg's will decide whether or not to make it a permanent fixture -- but let's not get carried away and mess with perfection.