You heard me, I hate him. If you watch the kind of TV that has commercials in it you’ve undoubtedly seen this little weirdo stealing airtime from valuable advertisements for yogurt/laxative and class action lawsuits.

But in case you’ve yet to be harangued by this lederhosen clad imp allow me to explain why he has become the most recent object of my scorn.

Behold: The breakfast commercial.

A child sits at a table, yawning as a gray day begins.

A mother is behind her, next to a toaster. The mother is ready to prepare her daughter a good breakfast to start her day and, with a knowing look, presses down on the lever of her toaster.

And then, like the devil at some dusty intersection in the Deep South, up springs an allegedly Austrian/German child replete with blue lederhosen, flying boxes of Toaster Strudel and the kind of thoughtless perma-smile that screams “I wouldn’t stop if I hit you with my car.”

Strudel Kid, awash now in the warm glow of the sun that only his breakfast food can provide, tells the girl that Toaster Strudel now contains “more fruit” as a flying strudel takes a bite from an apple in a nearby bowl of fruit.

The girl, happy with the mysterious breakfast gift, gladly eats the “warm, flaky” strudel. As Teutonic accordion music begins to swell the strudel monster masquerading as a child offers the four word pitch for his benefactors at Pillsbury. “Warm, flaky, Toaster Strudel!”

Then a man I?am convinced is an incognito Brian Doyle Murray pops up on the screen to reiterate the point of “now with more fruit.”

Where to begin …

First and foremost, what happened to the mother? We see her summon this strudel monster with the single press of a toaster lever, then she is never seen again.

For that matter, why does the strudel monster pop up, while the toaster lever goes down? This is the sort of ironic inversion that let’s you know the strudel monster is evil.

The girl has to reach past a bowl of fruit to take the toaster strudel. Why didn’t she just eat the fruit? Why didn’t her mother just give her fruit? Was her mother forced to summon the strudel monster as a part of this complete Faustian breakfast?

What does “more fruit” mean? Vague, incalculable terms in advertising are invariably used to mask the shockingly low and/or high quantity of an ingredient; in this case Pillsbury’s increase to “more fruit” from the previous industry benchmark of “some fruit” leads me to believe that both values would best be measured in parts per million.

Now, Pillsbury hadn’t always relied on the strudel monster or his dark arts to sell their lame breakfast pastries. Back in 1985 the Toaster Strudel spokesman was a German man. A real, live German guy with eyes that blinked and a vocabulary exceeding four words.

If you need proof you can find a flickering copy of the commercial on YouTube. The commercial shows the man, a baker, doubting the taste of the toaster strudel in comparison to his own strudel. Naturally, he is wowed by the great taste of the Toaster Strudel. Unnaturally the commercial is followed by a single frame of deceased film critic Gene Siskel’s face, as this commercial was probably taped during an airing of his show “At the Movies.”

The single, haunting image of the late critic is still infinitely more comforting than an entire commercial featuring the strudel monster.

The strudel monster has been shilling for the Doughboy for well over a year now, why the sudden hatred? I assure you, it is not sudden, merely apropos.

You see this last week marked the 50th anniversary of the original king of breakfast pastries you make in a toaster because you don’t have time to eat a real breakfast because who has the time to do that: The Pop Tart.

Yes, 50 years of fake cherry filling, burnt corners, and arguing with your friends when they are clearly wrong by not acknowledging “brown sugar cinnamon” as the greatest flavor. Sure, some people say that Kellogg’s ripped off the idea for the Pop Tart from Post’s Country Squares in 1963, but since “Country Squares” sounds less like a breakfast pastry and more like a quilting club I don’t think that really counts.

Do Pop Tarts count as a real breakfast? No.

Do they cause a fire in your toaster if left in too long? Yes … but since I’ve never met someone that likes their Pop Tarts “well done” this isn’t a pressing issue.

Are Pop Tarts still delicious after 50 years?

Well … kind of. I mean, its not a real pastry, or even close to one, but they are definitely “good enough.”

And since Kellogg’s has never resorted to making a deal with an insidious creature such as the strudel monster, that just might be enough to upgrade their taste to “pretty great.”

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Copy Editor Wes Burns is a Sunday columnist. The views expressed in this column are personal views of the writer and don’t necessarily reflect the views of the T-R. Contact Wes Burns at 641-753-6611 or wburns@timesrepublican.com.