Chuck Bryant

This was Post who was breaking new ground with these little handheld toaster heated pastries, right?

That's right.

Problem was, I don't know if the Battle Creek Enquirer got in there and had a spy or else if there was a really dumb vice president that was getting exposure in the Battle Creek Enquirer.

But Post was not ready to go to market with these things.

They had a recipe, but they didn't know how they were going to package it, market it, get it out to stores.

So they had many months of development left ahead of them when news broke.

Well, it just so happens that the higher ups at companies like Kellogg read the Battle Creek Inquirer because they're in the same town.

And this gave them the ability to catch up because they were caught totally off guard by this.

But it gave them the ability to catch up, scramble, and create their own versions.

And I believe Pop-Tarts ended up beating Country Squares to market.

Yeah.

I think the vice president of Kellogg's says, what is this Country Squares?

And someone said, it's a rural landowner in England.

No, there was a vice president, though, named William Lamothe.

And he had a guy working there in the kitchen named Doc Joe Thompson.

And he said, get to work.

We need our own pastry.

And it would be their first foray into any kind of little bakery product like that.

And they wanted a partner because they, you know, again, they were just cereal people.

Well, plus everybody likes to have a partner.