Kansas State football will play for a Pop-Tarts Bowl trophy that's a hit on social media

ORLANDO, Fla. — It didn't take long after its unveiling on Tuesday morning for the Pop-Tarts Bowl trophy to become the toast of X, formerly known as Twitter.

The three-tier trophy, displaying the popular pastries horizontally and vertically on the sides of the bottom two levels, is topped off by the piece de resistance, a football with two toaster slots filled by actual Kellogg's Pop-Tarts.

The trophy will go home with the winning team after Kansas State football and North Carolina State square off at 4:45 p.m. (CT) in the Pop-Tarts Bowl at Camping World Stadium.

The official reveal, which took place at an outing for the teams at the Fun Spot America theme park even featured K-State head coach Chris Kleiman and North Carolina State counterpart Dave Doeren ripping open a simulated Pop-Tarts wrapper.

K-State offensive lineman Hadley Panzer, when asked to review the trophy while it was displayed at Fun Spot, seemed more interested in the football toaster's contents than what the whole thing looked like.

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"I saw the trophy, but I'm more looking at the Pop-Tarts up there," he said with a smile. "It looks like strawberry, but I'm into more like blueberry, but it's good."

Matt Repchak, chief marketing director for the bowl and part of the team that came up with the 26 1/2-inch tall trophy design, said the plan is for the real Pop-Tarts to be replaced by metal replicas and fused to the football toaster for the winning team to take home. He said the brains behind it explored installing a lever on the football to make it more like an actual toaster, but that there wasn't enough time.

This is the first year for Pop-Tarts as name sponsor for the bowl game, which has been around in some form or other since starting as the Blockbuster Bowl in Miami in 1990. But coming up with the new trophy design was a marketing department's dream assignment.

Repchak said that the bowl team and Pop-Tarts' branding people got together for a brain-storming session, which produced two mock-ups that eventually were combined to form the finished product.

"One of them had the base with the Pop-Tarts design on the side, and the football," he said. "And one of them had the Pop-Tarts sticking out of it.

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"So, we ended up saying how do we mesh those two things together. How do you get the best of both worlds to really maximize the silliness of it."

Silliness was a key word throughout the process, Repchak added. In fact, the bowl put out a video parody of the process on social media called "Transform My Trophy," based on the old MTV show, "Pimp My Ride."

"That kind of spirit of fun and collaboration, that was like day one with Pop-Tarts," he said. "They came in saying their brand is to be kind of fresh and look at things through a different lens and subvert the conventions of what we usually do.

"And so, everything that they do is like, 'How can do this in a way that's creative and challenges expectations of a bowl game or whatever we're trying to do. As a marketing person, that's music to your ears, right? You have free license to throw all kinds of ideas at the wall and see what's actually going to come together."

North Carolina State coach Doeren gave the trophy a thumbs-up, but with one minor critique.

"It's beautiful, man. Looking forward to seeing that thing at the end of the game," he said. "It's really nice.

"I'm still wondering where that shot of bourbon goes on that thing, though."

Arne Green is based in Salina and covers Kansas State University sports for the Gannett network. He can be reached at agreen@gannett.com or on Twitter at @arnegreen.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas State football is chasing popular new Pop Tarts Bowl trophy