According to Bob Cabana, the early 1960s were defined by milk and cereal. And mega cereal companies Kellogg’s and Post were in constant competition for America’s breakfast bowls.
But both companies went to war in 1963 when Post finally cracked the code on a shelf-stable, heatable fruit pastry breakfast product. They called it the “Country Square,” and they’d developed it by stealing research from Bob’s own team at Kellogg’s.
Bob had given up on the product because he just could not find a way to make fruit shelf-stable. But he’s forced to pick the project up again when Edsel Kellogg III tasks him with finding a way to beat Post to grocery store shelves with Kellogg’s own breakfast pastry.
So Bob hires a team experts: NASA scientist (and former Kellogg’s employee) Donna “Stan” Stankowski; soft-serve ice cream genius Tom Carvel; children’s bicycle maker Steve Schwinn; inventor of the Sea-Monkey Harold von Braunhut; canned meatball whiz kid Chef Boyardee; tightly-tailored physical fitness icon Jack Lalanne; and from IBM, the smartest machine ever made, UNIVAC the computer.
It’s not exactly the team Bob wanted, but it’s the one he could get. And he’ll try just about anything to create a toaster-friendly, fruit pastry that kids will love.
Bob tells this story of his time at Kellogg’s to a runaway kid at the beginning of the film in order to give the boy’s parents more time to find him (which they do at the end of the film).
Unfrosted satirizes many ideas, ideals and blind spots from yesteryear. For instance, the movie skewers corporate cluelessness about how unhealthy it is to pack kids’ cereal with sugar.
The president of Quaker (another major cereal company) dresses up like an actual Quaker. He says things like, “Praise be!” and “Peace be upon you!” He’s criticized heavily for mixing cereal with religion. And a woman is appalled when he presides over her husband’s funeral with a cereal-based eulogy.
Two men inadvertently create a live ravioli after filling the pasta with Sea Monkeys. The creature grows, even developing a face.
We hear disparaging remarks about religion throughout the film. There’s a joke about a priest, as well as another joke about pentagrams and the devil. Bob says that Pop-Tarts are the “two greatest rectangles since the Ten Commandments.”
A man and woman debate which of them will have sex with another guy extorting their company for sugar. It’s implied that a man is about to cheat on his wife with two women, and we later hear both women are now pregnant. A man attempts to seduce a woman by dancing (since he heard the hip-motion demonstrates financial stability). Two characters nearly kiss.
A man wearing a tight-fitting jumpsuit is asked to find some less-revealing garments, since he’s promoting a children’s breakfast food. (He fails to fix this problem by wearing inflatable pants that pop in the rear when he squats.) An ad executive’s promotional campaigns are rejected for being too sexual, because his ideas all feature scantily-clad women.
We see a man showering from the shoulders up. Later, his bathrobe is blown off by a helicopter, but we still only see him from the shoulders up.
There are many sexual jokes and references. Many of those gags have to do with sexually charged names of children’s cereals. Several focus on rumored affairs of famous celebrities and politicians of the time. We hear some thinly veiled descriptions of male anatomy. Someone implies that many astronauts get divorced upon returning to Earth.
An extended slow-motion scene shows people eating cereal while a romantic song plays in the background. Milk is similarly treated in this pseudo-sexual manner, with a history video explaining how cows are milked.
A man uses the “RumpMaster,” a mechanical device that massages his rear end. There are a few jokes and statements that focus on rear ends, too. Someone is asked if she was nursed or bottle-fed. A woman checks a man out as he leaves a room after flirting with him. A young boy makes a crude reference to women’s undergarments. The two men who created the living ravioli raise their hybrid creature together, though there’s no indication if they are in a relationship or not.
Kellogg’s mascot actors stage a protest when they realize the company is phasing them out. However, this protest turns into a violent riot after an impassioned speech by the actor who plays Tony the Tiger. They storm the building, knocking down the (minimal) barricades and shoving Kellogg’s two security guards out of the way.
Smoke grenades are set off, folks scale the building (one man falls offscreen, presumably hurting himself) and rioters cause some minor destruction inside. However, they all simply walk away after realizing that they failed in their goal to stop the Pop-Tart from getting its FDA approval, effectively putting them all out of business.
(It should be noted that these events are a direct sendup of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. One character dresses up as one of the real attackers in a shirtless suspender outfit, complete with Viking horns. And rioters chant “Hunt Puntz”—the name of the FDA representative—in reference to Vice President Mike Pence.)
A man is vaporized from an explosion after his oxygen tank accidentally ignites a toaster. Another man is electrocuted by a toaster when he tries to use metal tongs to remove a pastry from it. A toaster catches on fire because the pastry inside allegedly contains a small amount of petroleum.
Marjorie Post, the head of Post cereal company, is violent toward her assistant. She shoves him around, shoots a rubber band in his eye, forces him to poison test food (which he gets a bloody nose from) and even beats him over the head with a heavy typewriter after he suggests creating a healthy breakfast food.
A man reads an article about Vietnam, stating, “Seems like a good idea!” Later, we learn UNIVAC was sent to Vietnam during the war, where its ideas became more “unsound.” (In previous scenes, its outputs were violent in nature. And shortly after predicting the death date of an elderly man, the man keels over.) Other plot points poke fun at the Cuban Missile Crisis, suggesting that it wasn’t about nuclear warheads but about a sugar shortage.
Many verbal threats are issued. Some jokes center around violent acts that occurred around the time of World War II. There’s a joke about President Kennedy’s assassination. We see real footage of a NASA rocket exploding shortly after takeoff. There are other references to NASA astronauts who were killed.
A man picks up a child and shakes him, screaming at the kid and threatening to kill his family; the kid cries, asking why the man was yelling at him like his father. Other adults force him to unhand the child.
An instructional video shows an astronaut beating an alien with a bat-like weapon. When a ventriloquist fails to make a sugar executive laugh, he’s escorted offscreen by guards, where we hear a gunshot. However, we later learn they shot his puppet, not him.
A child nearly chokes when his candy necklace gets caught in a rotating apparatus, but he’s OK since the necklace breaks. A man shoots Bob in the chest, but Bob’s unharmed since he had a titanium Pop-Tart sleeve in his pocket. Two delivery trucks attempt to run each other off the road in a race. We hear some people were bitten by children who wanted Pop-Tarts.
A man apologizes for his language after pairing God’s name with “d–n.” However, this term is repeated four more times after that, along with three other abuses of the Lord’s name. “D–n” makes another six appearances, along with 10 uses of “h—,” one of which is uttered by a child. And adults are appalled when they hear that a child used pieces of cereal to spell the word “a–.”
The term “dingus” is used repeatedly to describe the breakfast pastries that Kellogg’s and Post are developing before they’re given proper names. And a man is told he can’t say the word “hobo” because “bum” is the preferred term.
People drink alcohol at parties. A guy chugs beer when prompted by his colleagues. Several people smoke cigars (and one woman coughs heavily after trying one). Mannequins (including a dog) are portrayed smoking cigarettes. Someone says that all astronauts are chain-smokers. Another person says when astronauts return from space, they become alcoholics. Post makes a liquor-based cereal called Count Vodkula. A man complains that he should be allowed to drink as much as he wants since he pays his bills.
A child enters a diner and asks for a box of Pop-Tarts, telling the server to “leave the box” as he’s had a tough day.
As I mentioned earlier, Unfrosted’s satirical nature allows it to be very tongue-in-cheek. It pokes fun at how inexpensive things like college used to be, how sod was the ultimate status symbol and even how children used to swallow the prizes offered in cereal boxes, mistaking them for food. And while these things are played for humor, a few of them can be a bit mean-spirited.
Bob must “walk the aisle,” a punishment wherein he’s forced to walk down an aisle of milk cows standing in feces, all facing their rears to him as they pass gas. Later, he washes himself but laments that he can’t wash the imagery from his mind.
Kellogg’s attempts to slow production of the new breakfast pastry at Post by buying up all the sugar. Post tries to find a sugar alternative (Carcin-O-Sweet, which has “health problems off the charts”) before deciding to buy illegal sugar from Cuba via the Russians. We hear many jokes about Communism, too.
There are a few jokes about defecation and flatulence, and we hear a man defecated at Kellogg’s during a riot. A child carries a Whoopee cushion, presumably with the intent to use it. Several people gag at the smell coming from a rotten fruit dessert. A man falls unconscious after sniffing spoiled milk (and he’s later told the smell would have been fatal if it had sat there longer).
Two children repeatedly eat food out of a garbage can—the failed pastry experiments of Kellogg’s and Post. They convince Bob to try some of this trashed food as well. Later, we hear that Post sprayed coyote urine on their trash to stop the kids from eating it.
Kellogg’s buys the votes for an award show every year. Kellogg’s and Post each secretly spy on one another, and Post steals research from Kellogg’s. There’s a joke about mental illness. A man says he loves the anguish of other people. Some ad executives are really mean to Bob and his colleagues. A sugar executive allegedly gives a man diabetes after the guy fails to make his first payment for sugar on time.
Finally, we hear a few politically charged jokes. Kellogg’s ignores the requests of its mascots for better pay and better working conditions.
Jerry Seinfeld is better known for his stand-up comedy and TV performances than he is for films. In fact, he told GQ that he thinks the movie business is over, but he decided to make this film essentially because his friends talked him into it … and he really loves breakfast cereal.
The film is very loosely based on the battle between Kellogg’s and Post in the 1960s to create the first shelf-stable, fruit-filled breakfast pastry. But that seems to be where the similarities end.
Comparatively, Unfrosted isn’t particularly sexual or violent. And it’s void of really harsh profanity. Still, despite being a movie about a children’s breakfast food, it’s not intended for kids.
“G-dd–n” seems to be a favorite profanity of the film’s writers (which includes Seinfeld). Lewd comments make their way into dialogue frequently, too. A man’s far-too-fitted clothing becomes a source of discussion. And then there’s a whole scene devoted to spoofing the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Unfrosted is satirical. It’s meant to make you laugh at the silliness of past ideals and perhaps chuckle at the ridiculousness of more recent events. But it’s not family-friendly. And while parents may find this a toasty treat from Seinfeld, younger children are more liable to get burned.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
