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Unfrosted

  • ️Thu Mar 28 2024

Unfrosted (Film)

“I believe we have split the atom of breakfast.”

Unfrosted is a 2024 comedy film co-written, directed by, and starring Jerry Seinfeld. Joining Seinfeld in the cast are Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Amy Schumer, and Hugh Grant, among a host of other celebrity cameos.

Set in the 1960s, the film is a fictionalized account of the creation of Pop-Tarts, presenting a satirical take on true life stories through an over the top race between Kellogg’s Cereal and Post Consumer Brands to produce the world’s first viable breakfast pastry and change breakfast forever. The film released on Netflix May 3, 2024.

Previews: Trailer

Unfrosted contains examples of the following:

  • The '60s: The trailer’s narration sets the film in the early 1960s.
  • Actor Allusion: Jon Hamm and John Slattery play Madison Avenue advertising guys.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: UNIVAC has a creepy habit of predicting peoples' deaths.
  • Argentina Is Nazi-Land: Harold von Braunhut, the creator of Sea Monkeys, declines to answer questions about what he did during the '40s and considered moving to Argentina at one point.
  • Artistic License – History: Played for Laughs. The movie plays so fast and loose with 1960s history that it sometimes stops to clarify that certain events it depicts actually did happen in real life.
  • Brick Joke: Stan notes that Pop-Tart might get confused with Andy Warhol-style pop art. Warhol himself shoots Bob Cabana on The Tonight Show over this confusion.
  • The Cartel: El Sucre is presented as this way, except the white powder he trades is sugar.
  • Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs: Parodied. Both Kellogg's and Post are obsessed with marketing their cereals to kids, and adding more sugar is the go-to solution for making them more appealing to them.
  • Classically-Trained Extra: Thurl Ravenscroft, the actor who plays Tony the Tiger, feels demeaned by his work and wants to bring Shakespeare to Michigan.
  • Dance Party Ending: In the end credits, where the characters appear whenever any of their actors have their credits shown, most of them are seen dancing.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: The film's depiction of the long-running rivalry between Kellogg's and Post has many direct, tongue in cheek parallels to the Cold War, with their competition to unveil their cereal products playing out exactly like the Space and Nuclear Arms races, and the characters involved treat it with just as much severity.
  • Expy: Jon Hamm and John Slattery play a pair of ad men who are obvious Captain Ersatz versions of their Mad Men characters. Given that Slattery's character is even named "Roger", it borders on a Crossover Cameo.
  • The "Fun" in "Funeral": After Steve Schwinn is accidentally blown up, we cut to his funeral where he is buried with "full cereal honors"… And by "full cereal honors", we mean his coffin gets lowered into the grave, actual cereal and milk is poured onto his coffin, and the prize is folded like the American flag, similar to the military.
  • Gender-Blender Name: Donna Stankowski prefers to go by "Stan".
  • Goofy Suit: Like in real life, the early Kellogg's commercials feature actors dressing as their iconic cereal mascots, including Snap, Crackle and Pop and Tony the Tiger. These characters are almost always shown in their costumes, even during their riot in the third act.
  • Granola Girl: Donna Stankowski becomes at the end New-Age Retro Hippie, while eating granola.
  • Historical In-Joke: Andy Warhol shoots Bob Cabana over the confusion of Pop-Tarts with his pop art (the tart's foil wrapping act as a Pocket Protector). The real Andy Warhol survived an assassination attempt in 1968.
  • Historical Villain Upgrade: Bizarrely, the film depicts Thurl Ravenscroft as a narcissistic prima donna who deeply resents his association with Tony the Tiger, and he's eventually shown leading the (completely fictional) incursion on the Kellogg's building during the third act. The real Thurl had no involvement in any kind of violent insurrection, and actually loved playing Tony so much that he continued doing so for decades, up until his death in 2005.
  • Incredibly Obvious Bug: Post and Kellogg spy on each other by sending spies disguised as janitors with enormous cameras attached to the front of vacuums and mops.
  • It Will Never Catch On: A running gag in the film is the characters scoffing at future developments - air bags, the moon landing, even the Pop-Tarts themselves being frosted.
  • Little Green Men: When Bob Cabana goes to NASA headquarters to find Stan, an astronaut is preparing for the moon landing by practicing reacting to various types of little green aliens, like "hostile alien" and "tricky alien."
  • Milkman Conspiracy: Literal example, as milkmen are here presented as a dangerous group hostile to anyone who may threaten their interests. They are also suspected in shooting JFK.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: The toasting of a Pop-Tart, filmed like a rocket launch (with actual NASA equipment courtesy of Stan).
  • "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: With most of its events clearly being exaggerated and fictionalized for comedy, the movie has to clarify that, yes, Marjorie Post really did found Mar-A-Lago.
  • Only Sane Man: Steve Schwinn's wife is absolutely baffled by the "full cereal honors" ceremony at Steve's funeral and demands to know why her husband died by explosion at a cereal company.
  • Repurposed Pop Song: The trailer is set to “Rebel Rebel” by David Bowie.
  • Ripped from the Headlines: When Thurl is convinced that the Pop Tart will put him out of a job, he leads the cereal mascots in a violent riot to storm the Kellogg's HQ in order to "stop the certification" of the new product by FDA official Mike Puntz. This directly parodies the January 6th attack on the US Capitol following the 2020 presidential election, complete with Thurl wearing an identical outfit to the QAnon Shaman (albeit with tiger stripes) and his dialogue during the scene being directly lifted from Donald Trump's speeches on the day of the attack.
  • Serious Business: The race between Post and Kellogg’s to create a breakfast pastry eventually involves a sugar cartel, a secret milk mafia, and even entwines the Soviet and United States governments, with the conflict even triggering the Cuban Missile Crisis.
  • Sdrawkcab Name: Pop-Tarts were supposed to be "Trat-Pop", but the TV presenter accidentally read it backwards.
  • Who Shot JFK?: In the epilogue, one of the milkmen are suspected in the assassination of John F. Kennedy because he appears in the Zapruder Film.
  • Worst News Judgement Ever: The trailer shows a news report on Post developing a breakfast pastry, reported by none other than Walter Cronkite.