I agree that Little Debbie is generally better, but I do enjoy the occasional Twinkie. I imagine someone will buy the recipes, but they’ll probably just make the products in their existing facilities, which means those Hostess employees are still out of their jobs.
Eh. I grew up in Tastykake Country. Never did see the attraction of Twinkies, and the Tastykake cupcakes and pies are better.
But yeah, I’m sorry for the people who are losing their jobs.
I 'm glad Dan White isn’t alive to see this day…
I can get behind 3/5 of that sentiment.
Looks like Fruit Pie the Magician couldn’t pull any tricks out of his hat to save the company. Twinky the Kid’s horse had a flat and he showed up too late. Captain Cupcake’s tugboat sprang a leak. It’s kind of sad…the great middle ground of snack foods is now barren.
If Twinkies are gone, what will people fry now?
Obligatory re-post of important facts about Twinkies and their physical attributes.
The downward spiral began when they stopped using the name King Don for the Ding Dong. Long live the King. The King is dead.
I’ll miss the fruit pies a little bit, but that’s all.
Alert!! Mrs. Cubbison’s Stuffing is a Hostess product. If you are a lazy Thanksgiving cook, you might want to plan for it not being there next week.
All I know is that I’m glad I ate that Deep Fried Twinkie at Fremont Street in Vegas. Even though it was gross and I threw half of it out. Been there, done that. 
Pepperidge Farms makes a quite decent analog.
Stove Top instead of Mrs. Cubbison’s.
I agree that no way Hostess gets to just close their doors. The creditors will sell of the brand name and production facilities and the workers will be back to work without a cushy contract by the end of January. I’m betting on Bimbo being at the head of the line to buy up the lot.
It almost doesn’t seem possible that a company that was so ubiquitous could go away. I mean, everything they made (with the possible exception of that stuffing) was a household name.
Is there any consensus why? It’s not like Americans have been on a health kick and shunning junk food for the last decade.
I actually had a similar experience with Dolly Madison. Their stuff wasn’t available in the west (or at least the northwest) when I was a kid. Maybe it still isn’t. But they sponsored all the Peanuts specials on TV. I don’t believe I ever got to experience a Zinger.
According to Wikipedia, Dolly Madison is owned by Hostess, whose products were plentiful in my area. I don’t know if they owned them at the time, though.
One of my guilty pleasures is (was) the blackberry pie. That one is not available in the east (where I now live), but I’d usually have one on my trips back home.
Might just be the northwest (or maybe it happened later–I was a kid in the 70s)–I had Zingers often in my school lunches in elementary school in southern California. They came in 3-packs. That kind of blows my mind in today’s healthy-food era, but they did. And they were better back then, too. The frosting was different, at least on the chocolate ones. You could peel it off in one big piece and eat it separately.
I don’t know much about this other than what’s here but it looks like those 18,000 workers may have had a hand in cooking their own goose.
*Hostess Brands Inc. says it’s going out of business after striking workers across the country crippled its ability to make its Twinkies, Ding Dongs and other snacks.
The company had warned employees that it would file a motion with U.S. Bankruptcy Court Friday seeking permission to shutter its operations and sell its brands if plants hadn’t resumed normal operations by a Thursday evening deadline. The deadline passed without a deal.*
Bad news and bad timing all the way around.
I think it’s my fault. Used to really like their fruit pies. And then I had an epiphany some time in my early 20’s. Which was “Hey, even as a guilty pleasure, this stuff is terrible.”
So it’s been 30 years since I’ve bought any sort of Hostess product.
The chocolate twinkies are awful. It doesn’t matter someone will buy at least the name and use that. Did Hostess change Zingers to Hostess, when they bought out Dolly Madison.
Kind of like the Abercrombie and Fitch of today has only the name in common with the A&F from the first part of the 1900s
They’ve gone through bankruptcy twice in the past decade, they’ve had, IIRC, 6 CEOs in the past 9 years, and they’re currently owned by a group of investment firms. From what I’ve read, this was not the first time that they’d gone to the unions looking for concessions. To what extent they simply didn’t have a viable business model, versus union intractability, managerial incompetence or the ownership just trying to milk the company for money, I don’t know.
Not back then, no.
Dolly Madison (and Butternut bread) were originally made by Interstate Brands, while Hostess (and Wonder bread) were made by Continental Baking. The two companies merged in 1995, and were eventually renamed Hostess Brands.
Not necessarily. They may buy them in order to retire them, so that no one else will get them. Not Twinkies, since that brand name is worth a lot, but some of the other ones probably will. It will most likely be those that aren’t that popular and have other versions.