Seinfeld: Behind The Scenes Of Jerry’s Breakfast Obsession

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Jerry Seinfeld loves him some breakfast.  

He famously always had cereal on hand in his Seinfeld apartment. He often gets a morning meal with fellow comics when they’re in Cars Getting Coffee. And his book Is This Anything?, chronicling four decades of his stand-up material, is stuffed with jokes about breakfast generally, cereal specifically, and of course, the delights of the Pop-Tart. (More on the other jokes in a bit.)

So it came as no surprise that Seinfeld and his pals at Netflix have returned to the breakfast well with Unfrosted, an entire fricking movie based on his old Pop-Tarts routine. 

And how did Seinfeld decide to expand this jokey bit into a feature-length flick?

“Stuck at home watching endless sad faces on TV, I thought this would be a good time to make something based on pure silliness,” Seinfeld told Deadline. “So we took my Pop-Tart stand-up bit from my last Netflix special and exploded it into a giant, crazy comedy movie.”

We’re still not sure how this fills 90 minutes, but we’re willing to find out. 

It’s not the first time Seinfeld has returned to his Pop-Tart roots. In 2012, he sat down with the New York Times to painstakingly deconstruct the whole Pop-Tart routine (which, by the way, has some decent pointers for any of you aspiring comedy writers. 

Unfrosted hasn’t begun actual production yet, so to tide you over, we’re counting down our list of Jerry Seinfeld’s five greatest breakfast jokes (Pop-Tart bits excluded) from Is This Anything? It’s all part of a well-balanced comedy meal to start your day.

[num]5. [/num]On the front of cereal boxes they always have that perfect picture. And for some reason it always has to say right next to it, “Serving suggestion.”  Like, “we’re not insisting on a bowl.  Just a suggestion.  Put it in your hat if you want. Milk? Just another idea. Putting it out there.  Throw it up in the air. Run under it with our mouth open. We don’t care. It’s your business. We suggest MILK. In a bowl. With a spoon. But, just to be clear, we only suggested it. Somebody gets hurt, it’s not our fault.”

[num]4. [/num]Our parents had no clue there was no food in any of these products. Until the Cookie Crisp people had to come along and blow the lid off the whole racket. Just one little step too far. Cookie Crisp should have been called “To Hell with Everything.”  It’s not like cookies, it is cookies. This is your breakfast, a bowl of chocolate chip cookies. Ice cream for lunch, cake for dinner, bacon and cigarettes in between.  This is the Cookie Crisp total health plan.  I think it was after a bowl of Cookie Crisp that Nietzsche said, “If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.”

[num]3. [/num]Grape-Nuts is a mysterious product. You open the box, pour it in the bowl, no grapes, no nuts. What’s the story? Can you call things anything you want now? Can you call “milk,” “shoes”?  You open the carton. Pour it on your feet. “Hey, these aren’t shoes. What the hell is this?”

[num]2. [/num]You have weird breakfasts when you’re out of milk. Three Kraft Singles and some tap water.

[num]1. [/num]We had Shredded Wheat. It was like wrapping your lips around a wood chipper. You’d have breakfast, you had to take two days off for the scars to heal so you could speak again.

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