How Jerry Seinfeld Parodied the Pop-Tart’s Origins Without Permission: ‘If People Are Dead, It’s Much Harder for Them to Sue You’

variety.com:

Todd Gilchrist editor Breakfast is often called the most important meal of the day. It’s also long been a fixture of Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy — from “The Tonight Show” routines about Cookie Crisp to the Honeycomb and Raisin Bran boxes lining the shelves of his cupboards on “Seinfeld.” His directorial debut, “Unfrosted,” brings the obsession full circle, chronicling the 1960s origins of Kellogg’s Pop-Tart. “It’s really just candy disguised as a meal,” he says of the appeal of breakfast food. “And I really just want candy.” Seinfeld juggles a lot of, ahem, bowls on the Netflix film.

He not only directed but also co-wrote, produced and stars in “Unfrosted,” which evolved from a joke told about the venerable toaster pastry in his 2020 Netflix special “23 Hours to Kill.” Ahead of the movie’s May 3 debut, the comedian reveals his inspirations for its heavily fictionalized story — and contemplates which cereal might prompt a return to the director’s chair. In telling the origin story of the Pop-Tart, when did you decide that printing the legend was a better route than telling the real story? Well, as a comedian, the last thing that would interest me would be the truth. Were there specific 1960s brand icons or people that you wanted to highlight — even if you were going to make fun of them? I remember reading when JFK assembled his Cabinet after he was elected in 1960, he said, “I don’t care if they’re political — I just want the best minds in America.” I thought, that’s a ’60s problem-solution idea, so we thought, who were the greatest minds of the ’60s?

And the only people we knew who were bigger than Chef Boyardee were Jack LaLanne and whoever invented Sea-Monkeys, who turned out to be this ex-Nazi. How tough was it to get.