Joe Rogan Accused ‘Seinfeld’ of Stealing Kevin James’ Muffin Jokes
Seinfeld fans will recall that, in the eighth season of the show, Elaine inadvertently inspires her old boss, Mr. Lippman, to launch a new business that exclusively sells muffin tops. But the shop “Top of the Muffin to You!” runs into trouble when Lippman can’t a way to properly dispose of the muffin stumps that literally nobody in the world likes.
Weirdly, this episode about a stolen pastry-based idea, was itself accused of thievery. Back in 2017, podcast host (and Canada’s archenemy) Joe Rogan suggested that the muffin top storyline was lifted from Paul Blart himself: Kevin James.
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Rogan told guest Andrew Santino that some of Seinfeld’s “top writers” once went to see James perform at “an NBC showcase, when Kevin was getting a development deal.” And the following season one of his “signature bits” about muffins “was on a Seinfeld episode.”
James does have a bit about muffins, which appears in his 2001 special Sweat the Small Stuff, but it has nothing to do with selling muffin tops. It’s just about how comically large muffins have gotten (“I’ll have the bean bag chair with raisins”). And “The Muffin Tops” is seemingly the only muffin-centric episode of Seinfeld.
It’s possible that James had a bit about muffin tops in his act that didn’t make it into the special, but James himself has never publicly complained about Seinfeld’s muffin content. Seeing as this story is coming from the same source who once claimed that vaccines alter your DNA, maybe take it with a grain of salt.
According to the episode’s writer, Spike Feresten, the muffin-top stuff wasn’t even a part of the original script. There was supposed to be a storyline about spying on neighbors with a Bearcat scanner, but two days before filming, a similar joke popped up in an episode of Frasier. So Feresten scrambled to come up with something fresh, recalling that an ex-girlfriend had refused to eat the bottoms of muffins. Although, as far as we know, she never turned that idiosyncrasy into a lucrative side hustle.
Not long after Rogan claimed that the episode was a rip off, the episode was arguably ripped off — not by another TV show, but by fast-food overlords McDonald’s. In 2018, Mickey D’s started selling muffin tops, in the form of “McCafé Muffin Toppers.”
Feresten wasn’t upset, but did jokingly suggest that McDonald’s should pay him “a billion dollars” for the idea so that he could buy a bigger car collection than Jerry Seinfeld. He also admitted that he was surprised that it took 21 years for someone to run with the idea, as he was expecting a “muffin top craze” to hit America immediately after the episode aired.
Since the product was quickly discontinued, McDonald’s never faced any lawsuits from the Seinfeld writers. Nor Kevin James for that matter.
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