I don’t recall seeing these before Hostess went bankrupt. Saw them this evening at the gas station and bought a pack. Tasted the same as a Twinkie to me.
I remember as a kid that Little Debbie didn’t seem that good. They seemed to have improved over the years. Or maybe I’m just missing Hostess more and more?
My dad loved the Banana Twins. I never could see the appeal. Way too sweet and not enough banana taste.
Little Debbie has been making Cloud Cakes for a long time. I’ve also seen similar types of store-branded snack cakes in places like Safeway and Wal-Mart. Hostess Twinkies will be making a return to store shelves next month, however.
Little Debbie used to be the Poor Man’s Hostess. Their snack cakes weren’t direct knockoffs of any particular Hostess product. They were the same kind of thing, except you could buy a box of them for 99 cents, and they tasted like they were made of wax. At some point, even before the demise of Hostess (but maybe after Hostess had started to decline in quality), Little Debbie started offering more expensive, and I presume higher quality, stuff, including things that were more direct knockoffs of Hostess Twinkies and such. I’m not sure when that happened, or even if I’m remembering right. But I do remember buying Aldi’s store brand pseudotwinkies back in the early 90s.
To me, the best ersatz Twinkie is the Tastykake Dreamie. I’d rate it an 85, with the cake part REALLY close to Twinkiedom, while the creme filling is not quite there, but not bad. Kroger has started carrying these.
I like WalMart’s house version of the Twinkie. They have about 90% more creme in the middle. Everything else is about the same. But, as pointed out above, somebody needs to get a humping and conjure up an Orange Twinkie.