'Is it a real functional toaster?': Behind the scramble to engineer the Pop-Tarts Bowl trophy - ESPN

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Shortly after Iowa State's win in the 2024 Pop-Tarts Bowl, Cyclones receiver Jaylin Noel, in a celebratory mood, went to grab the game's trophy to lug it home. But this trophy is different from any other and, as such, required Josh Price, an engineer who helped build the thing, to deliver some safety instructions. Noel wasn't interested.

«He was like, 'It's a freakin' toaster, man,' and ran out of the room,» Price said.

With that, Price couldn't argue. Because the Pop-Tarts Bowl trophy is indeed a freakin' toaster.

The Pop-Tarts Bowl debuted as a genuine sports phenomenon in 2023, when the big shiny trophy — a football with slots holding fake Pop-Tarts — was unveiled, or rather, unwrapped. People went nuts, like they do for everything about this game, from the edible mascots to this year's helmets with sprinkles sprinkled in the stripes. In the week after the Pop-Tarts Bowl in 2023, Kellogg's sold 22 million more Pop-Tarts than they had the week before the game.

«I'm not going to pretend that this was the plan the whole time, but I think we had the right bones in place because we had the right approach,» said Matt Repchak, the chief marketing officer at Florida Citrus Sports, which operates the bowl along with the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl. «We're not the Rose Bowl, we're not one of the biggest games in the college football calendar year, but we're always going to be fun to watch.»

But after the trophy reveal, there was one constant question. And when you're a bowl geared around social interaction, you pay attention to the internet's questions.

«The first question people asked was, 'Is it a real functional toaster?' And that persisted,» Repchak said. «We didn't anticipate the lightning in a bottle that that