Walmart Great Value Toaster Pastries Vs Pop-Tarts: Which Is Better?

Welcome to Dupe Detective, a new column where I'll be reviewing a name brand food product's competitor product to find out how well it compares to, or even beats, the original.

Technically, Pop-Tarts were not the original toaster pastries, ranking among 10 foods with shady origin stories. The Post brand was the first to come up with the toaster pastry concept, but due to unveiling its Country Squares ahead of their availability to the general public, Kellogg's knock-off Pop-Tarts beat Post's original product to market and came to define the style of breakfast treat. Even if Pop-Tarts were inspired by another brand's product, it's fair to say that Walmart's Great Value toaster pastries are a dupe of Pop-Tarts and not County Squares, given the latter brand's relative lack of name recognition. That said, when I compared nine Dollar Tree dupes to their name-brand equivalents, I found that Toast'em Pop-Ups — the current incarnation of Post County Squares — actually tasted better than Pop-Tarts.

This time around, I picked up Frosted Strawberry and Frosted Chocolate Fudge flavors of both Great Value toaster pastries and Pop-Tarts from my local Walmart Neighborhood Market in order to find out just where Walmart's dupe fits into the equation. Ahead are my thoughts on all four products, as well as my pick for the superior toaster pastry brand.

At the forefront of my Great Value Frosted Strawberry toaster pastries' flavor was strawberry, just as advertised. Unfortunately it was subtle, bogged down by an excessive quantity of flavorless breading. When I initially removed my Pop-Tarts and Great Value toaster pastries from their packaging, I was intrigued by the heftier weight of the Walmart product. For the Frosted Strawberry flavor, that ended up being a weak point, given that the extra mass was devoted mostly to a mediocre outer shell as opposed to more flavorful components.

My Great Value Frosted Chocolate Fudge toaster pastries were quite a bit better than their strawberry counterparts, tasting strongly of rich, buttery chocolate. Their breading was a little mealy as well, but not as distracting, contributing to a thick fudge character rather than dampening the overall flavor. For what it's worth, their box claims they can be enjoyed both warm and cold, and I liked mine better untoasted . 

Out of the toaster, they lost some of their thickness, but gained a bit of a roasted flavor that didn't complement the chocolate all that well. Some find that Pop-Tarts benefit from an air fryer, but I don't own one and stuck with the toaster — and while toasting made the Great Value Frosted Chocolate Fudge flavor nominally worse, it did, actually, make the Frosted Strawberry flavor nominally better.

My local Walmart Neighborhood Market happened to carry Protein Slammin' Strawberry Pop-Tarts, new as of 2026. But there are those who find the Pop-Tarts flavor disappointing and its taste vitamin-like, so I stuck with classic Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts. Untoasted, I found their flavor like that of sugar cookies, defined more by their generically sweet breading and frosting than the strawberry jam within. Warming one up made the flavor of the jam more prominent, adding a slightly sour tang — strawberries are among 10 foods with more vitamin C than oranges, after all.

The Frosted Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tarts I tried tasted strongly of fudge, just like their Great Value dupe. While the thickness of the Walmart product was somewhat compelling, I ended up preferring Pop-Tarts' leaner, crisper style of breading, because it distracted less from the chocolatey goodness that makes this Pop-Tarts flavor so iconic. Just like Walmart's dupe, I preferred my fudge Pop-Tarts untoasted. Warming one up accentuated its butteriness while subtracting from its chocolatiness, resulting in an inferior flavor ratio. They were still solid warm, but I preferred their flavor at room temperature.

When I compared Walmart's Great Value Twist & Shout Cookies to Oreos, I found the name-brand product superior, but only by the slimmest of margins. My Pop-Tarts, however, were solidly better than Walmart's Great Value toaster pastries. The biggest factor that separated the two products was the thickness of the breading on Walmart's dupe, apparent to me as soon as I picked up individual toaster pastries from each brand.

Walmart's Frosted Strawberry was brought down considerably by its thickness, minimizing a strawberry flavor that should have been more prominent. Great Value Frosted Chocolate Fudge's thickness wasn't bad, but once I tried the equivalent Pop-Tarts, I realized just how much I preferred their slimmer form. 

All four products contained pretty scant quantities of filling, and Pop-Tarts' leaner size was more conducive to tasting that filling. While their lower price point is a perfectly valid reason to opt for Great Value toaster pastries — they're not bad, by any means — shoppers looking for the tastier breakfast treat should stick with name-brand Pop-Tarts, regardless of flavor.

I bought all four products from the same Walmart Neighborhood Market. At that store, my eight-unit boxes of Pop-Tarts were $2.78 each, whereas equivalent 12-unit boxes of Great Value toaster pastries were $2.26 each.

The serving size for both Walmart's products and both kinds of Pop-Tarts is a consistent 96 grams, equivalent to two pastries. Great Value Frosted Strawberry totals 360 calories, 9 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of which is saturated fat, 340 milligrams of sodium, 67 grams of carbs, 1 gram of fiber, 39 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein. Great Value Frosted Chocolate Fudge equals 370 calories, 9 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of which is saturated fat, 380 milligrams of sodium, 66 grams of carbs, 1 gram of fiber, 38 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein.

Meanwhile, Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts are 370 calories, 8 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of which is saturated fat, 310 milligrams of sodium, 71 grams of carbs, 1 gram of fiber, 31 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein. Finally, Frosted Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tarts total 370 calories, 9 grams of fat, 3 grams of which is saturated fat, 410 milligrams of sodium, 69 grams of carbs, 2 gram of fiber, 35 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein.

All of the Great Value toaster pastries and Pop-Tarts I tried came from the same Walmart Neighborhood Market, located near my home in the suburbs of Las Vegas. For all four products, I tried one toaster pastry at room temperature and one toasted. While I didn't finish them each in their entirety, I tasted a little over half of eight toaster pastries in total, all in one sitting. So neither brand would be affected by asymmetrical toasted-ness, I heated up both Frosted Strawberry pastries at once in a toaster made for two bread slices, and then did the same for the Frosted Chocolate Fudge flavors.

Order-wise, I started with my untoasted Walmart Strawberry pastry, then tried the Walmart Strawberry toasted. Then I did the same for the Strawberry Pop-Tarts. After that, I repeated the process for both kinds of Fudge pastries. Finally, I had a few extra bites of all four flavors in no particular order to help solidify my initial opinions. My assessments are based entirely on this experience and not any thoughts I may have had on the featured products or brands prior.