The extra-long egg tart trend has fizzled out: viral hits created by traffic never stay popular for more than two months.

Before the National Day, the "meter-long" super-long egg tart that went viral on short videos quickly cooled down amid the consumption boom of the National Day holiday.

From long queues at offline stores and internet celebrities flocking to check in, to billions of view exposures across the whole network and tens of millions of GMV recorded by a single brand, then to a cliff-like drop in popularity, the internet celebrity effect of super-long egg tarts lasted for less than two months.

Without exclusive technology, insufficient product iteration and upgrading, the super-long egg tart that only became a hit by short video traffic is ultimately doomed to be a flash in the pan. This seems to have become the established fate of the internet celebrity trend in the snack track.

Rapid Cooling After Explosive Popularity

During the National Day holiday, passenger flow in commercial districts and pedestrian streets across the country rebounded, and offline catering generally recovered, but the popularity of super-long egg tarts dropped rapidly.

Back in September, the super-long egg tart was the undisputed top trend in the baking track. Short video content and exploration posts on Xiaohongshu were all over the feeds, offline stores kept having long queues, and there even existed scenarios of price-markup purchasing agents and limited sales.

The extreme visual contrast and social sharing attributes made it the fastest-spreading catering single product in the second half of the year.

But the fading of internet celebrity popularity came even faster than its outbreak. In the second half of the National Day holiday, the market trend suddenly reversed. Baking stores in some core commercial districts gradually removed the main promotional posters of super-long egg tarts, and a large number of night market stalls and community bakeries directly removed this product from their menus.

In fact, the super-long egg tart is not an original new product of a certain brand, and its explosive popularity is an accidental hit driven by short video traffic.

The shape of long-strip egg tart has actually existed for a long time. Earlier, baking brands in Guangdong and Guangxi regions launched 30cm "stick tarts" that also focused on the long-strip selling point, but they were only limited to the regional market.

In early August 2026, a franchise store of a chain baking brand in Henan Province independently launched the "extended version egg tart". A short video taken casually by the store clerk unexpectedly leveraged local traffic, with single-day group-buying orders exceeding 200 and the number of in-store customers skyrocketing.

The brand headquarters quickly followed up, optimized product specifications, tart crust texture and supporting packaging, and launched the product for sale with live-streaming drainage after completing standardized polishing.

According to platform group-buying data and industry statistics, for this super-long egg tart product of this brand alone, from the trial operation to September 22, the group-buying volume on a single platform exceeded 730,000 orders, with GMV over 13 million yuan.

As a large number of check-in and queuing scenes continued to spread on social platforms, attracting food exploration bloggers across the country to gather momentum, the super-long egg tart was pushed to be a national internet celebrity hit product.

The accidental attempt of the baking store in Henan was the traffic starting point of super-long egg tarts. What really made this product popular nationwide was the mature prefabricated baking supply chain in Wuhan.

During this period, many frozen baking factories in Wuhan quickly completed the R&D and mass production of 60cm super-long tart crusts, and supported standardized fillings, special packaging boxes and baking molds, providing one-stop wholesale supply. Both chain baking stores, street stalls and scenic shops can purchase standardized semi-finished products.

In just over ten days, merchants across the country followed suit to launch this product intensively. A product that was originally a trial by accident quickly became a mass-produced internet celebrity product on the whole network, and its short life cycle was already doomed.

Inherent Defects

The fundamental reason why super-long egg tarts quickly became outdated lies in the inherent flaws in product attributes and business models, which is also a common problem of all short-lived internet celebrity snacks at present.

The popularization of prefabricated semi-finished products has lowered the entry threshold for internet celebrity single products. Traditional egg tarts rely on chefs to make pastry by hand, prepare egg liquid and control baking temperature, which has certain technical requirements. However, the prefabrication of super-long egg tarts has realized "de-pastry-chef operation".

Stores only need to purchase frozen tart crusts and prepared fillings, thaw them, put them into molds, pour in tart liquid, and serve after baking. The extremely low operation threshold allows novice entrepreneurs and street vendors to quickly follow up.

In the entire industrial chain, the upstream prefabrication factories are the biggest beneficiaries, who can accurately capture the traffic trend of the platform, quickly mass-produce semi-finished products, and harvest dividends while the trend lasts.

In September, a baking factory in Wuhan said in an interview with the media that its workshop operated 24 hours a day, producing regular egg tart products within the conventional 8 working hours, and working overtime to produce super-long tart crusts in the rest of the time, with orders scheduled to be after the National Day holiday.

Once the popularity of the product declines, the factory will immediately switch to other product categories.

All business risks are always concentrated on small and medium-sized merchants at the terminal. A large number of shop owners followed the trend to enter the market. In the initial stage, relying on the internet celebrity effect, they could still maintain high passenger flow and high gross profit. As more and more similar players joined, homogeneous competition directly triggered a price war. In just one month, the selling price of super-long egg tarts dropped from 20-30 yuan to more than 10 yuan.

Compared with the drawbacks of the business model, the defect of the product itself is more fatal. From the very beginning of its design, the super-long egg tart is made for the camera.

The 60cm length and the visual effect of stretching cheese bring extremely strong picture impact. But in order to support the super-long shape and prevent deformation during baking, the tart crust is much thicker than that of ordinary egg tarts, and the finished product tastes hard and dry.

The long and narrow structure also leads to unbalanced distribution of fillings: the tart crust at both ends is thick and dry with almost no filling, while the middle part is full of accumulated fillings, leading to poor overall taste. At the same time, the super-long size is extremely impractical, as it is very easy to crumble, the crust collapses and the filling leaks when eating, leading to generally poor consumption experience.

The one-time check-in consumption makes this product hard to generate repurchases. After the sense of freshness fades, it is inevitable that it will be out of fashion.

Compressed Life Cycle of Internet Celebrity Products

In the short video era, the life cycle of internet celebrity snacks has been extremely compressed. From the early smoking ice cream and towel cake, to the super-long fries and bursting durian cake in the past two years, to today's super-long egg tart, the survival time of internet celebrity single products has been shortened from half a year to one or two months.

The rapid rise and fall of super-long egg tarts is a true epitome of the entire internet celebrity snack track. The current snack market is breaking away from the traditional logic of "taste first", and gradually falling into the vicious circle of traffic thinking.

The maturity of the prefabricated supply chain has infinitely lowered the threshold for new product innovation. As long as there is a slight traffic trend on the platform, upstream factories can quickly complete R&D and mass production. As a result, all internet celebrity products will eventually go on the old path of following suit, vicious price competition and rapid elimination.

What today's internet celebrity snacks reflect is not innovation, but they have become mass-produced traffic props on the assembly line. Blindly chasing algorithm preferences and attracting traffic by visual gimmicks, while ignoring the most fundamental taste, experience and public praise.

In this era of emerging internet celebrities, consumers have become more mature. Young users no longer pay blindly for marketing hype and internet celebrity premium, which makes the internet celebrity effect come fast and go even faster.

The rapid decline of super-long egg tarts has sounded the alarm for the internet celebrity consumption track. Short videos can make a product popular overnight, but cannot create sustainable consumption demand; the supply chain can mass-produce hit products, but cannot create long-term vitality for products.

The current industry status that internet celebrity products iterate once a month means that the dividend of traffic speculation has reached its peak.

It is predictable that the next "super-long XX" style internet celebrity product is already waiting at the supply chain end, ready to get the algorithm's traffic favor at any time.

This article is from WeChat Official Account "Zebra Consumption" (ID: banmaxiaofei), written by Ren Jianxin, published with authorization from 36Kr.