Jerry Seinfeld’s Pop-Tarts film is part of a wider, now legitimate, trend in movies

Not long ago, the idea of a Pop-Tarts movie would be utterly ridiculous. Why would anyone spend two hours watching a story about a sugary breakfast pastry you wouldn’t deign to eat?

The upcoming comedy started life as a joke Jerry Seinfeld once told during a stand-up set. Now, it’s starting to sound even more ludicrous.

Except, Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story is part of a wider trend in which the history of familiar products, especially nostalgic ones, is what passes for original storytelling in movies.

It would be easy to be churlish about it, to turn your nose up at what seems like little more than branded exercises, but the truth is, some of these movies have actually been great.

The more clearcut origin stories such as The Founder (McDonald’s), Blackberry, Tetris, The Beanie Bubble, Flamin’ Hot (Cheetos) and Air (Nike) have intense human drama and heightened stakes.

It helps that they tend to involve outsized personalities whose ambition and gumption is what led them to strive for the near-impossible in the first place. Those people tend to not be boring, and if they were, there’s a screenwriter handy to punch up that dialogue or embellish a personal element.

And there’s a built-in audience already invested because they’ve eaten a Maccas cheeseburger, worn those Air Jordans, bought a Beanie Baby and have owned a Blackberry. It’s another form of intellectual property and audiences like what they already know.

The trick is to give them a new experience connected to the familiar.

The more abstract branded stories, which tend to be toy-based titles such as Barbie and The Lego Movie, start from a place of playful experimentation. No wonder there are movies in the works for Barney, Polly Pocket and The Sims.

So, yes, the Pop-Tarts movie is coming our way, in a month, and it may even be good.

Certainly, it has an insanely stacked cast that either saw something in the script they liked, wanted to work with Seinfeld who directed and starred in it or, at the very least, wasn’t embarrassed to be involved with a now-legitimate sub-genre.

The trailer dropped over the Easter long weekend and it couldn’t even fit all the famous faces that are listed in the credits.

Joining Seinfeld in chunky roles are Melissa McCarthy, Amy Schumer, Jim Gaffigan and Hugh Grant but the longer list also includes Dan Levy, Christian Slater, Max Greenfield, Peter Dinklage, Jack McBrayer, Bobby Moynihan, Tony Hale, Jon Hamm, Maria Bakalova, Dean Norris, Cedric the Entertainer, Bill Burr (as JFK no less!) and James Marsden.

That’s one hell of a premiere party.

The story — if that even matters — is set in 1963 and is about the rivalry between the US’s two biggest cereal companies, Kellogg’s and Post to see who could first bring to market a shelf-stable breakfast pastry.

Unfrosted is on Netflix on May 3.