Today I found a twin pack of Twinkies at the grocery store. It was sitting in a box of chewing gum on the impulse shelf at the checkout line. Impulsively I bought it. I thought they’d be all gone far before now. Anyways, I’m at home trying to figure out how old they are. The date code isn’t in plain language and I couldn’t find any way to decipher it on the 'Net. If anyone knows what the date code “53 271E 05:01” means on the Gregorian calendar, I’d love to know. This is not a “needs answer fast:” I don’t plan on eating them.
Let’s see if this is useful at all - I didn’t read either article completely but on first glance they seem helpful:
First Article Found
Second article found - I think this one seems more helpful than the first
Thanks. The articles are good but don’t cover this date code. Maybe I’ll bring them to a university lab for a carbon dating or something.
I assume this was meant as a joke, since radiocarbon dating isn’t anywhere near accurate enough to get within more than a few decades of the real age. The last shipment of Twinkies that I could find was in mid-December, so they are probably at least 3 1/2 months old by now (far beyond their 25 day shelf life).
Despite urban legend, twinkies go stale pretty fast. The ones near expiration date aren’t as soft as ones eaten well ahead of that date, and ones a week or 2 past are getting into nasty territory. I figure you’re just doing this as a lark, but if you were to eat them, you wouldn’t like it.
Someone’s bought the rights, and word is we should see some fresh ones this summer. I’m torn between hoping they bring back the banana creme ones, or hoping they don’t 'cause I don’t need to be eating them.
Again, thanks all. I’m curious about the date simply because I’ve gotten very old food at this store before. Once I got those eggs in a milk carton that were 3 months beyond the sell by date. The assumption that these Twinkies were from the last production run isn’t a given.
Eggs in a milk carton?
Like Egg Beaters. It’s a godsend for those of us who don’t use eggs very often, except when they’re old and smelly.
If the Twinkie has a light blue handkerchief, you should suck the filling out first.
If it has a yellow handkerchied, dunk it in milk.
Date codes can be anything really. What looks like the time at the end of the code probably is, the ink jet printers can be programed to include the time. The “E” is probably the shift or crew that produced the batch. Not sure how those numbers translate into the date. One is probably the plant/facility number.
I worked in a feed manufacturing plant and we used a date code derived from something like this:
S O U T H E R N P A C I FIC
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
3-31-13 would be UUSSU. If someone called and wanted to know when the feed was made we would tell them but it was less of a concern to the customer than seeing the actual date for some reason.
We shared the date code translation with the quality control people at the customer’s end so they could rotate stock. To the feed handler the actual date that shows the feed to be 2 months old caused more concern than if they were told that the feed was well within it’s shelf life.
Hand to God I thought this was going to be a thread on the signal codes effeminate gay men use in clubs to indicate what style of sex they like.
Dallas, that sounds like it could work. I wonder what the “word” is?