Let’s not panic. We all know that Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Wonder Bread and the rest of Hostess Brands’ oddly everlasting foods aren’t going away any time soon, even if the food culture that created them is gasping its last.
Yes, Hostess is shutting down. And odds seem to favor the roughly century-old company disappearing from our corporate landscape. But before you rush out to stockpile a strategic Twinkie reserve, consider a few things.
There’s the acquisition-happy nature of the business world, an environment that increasingly prizes intellectual property above all. It’s hard to imagine the fading away of brands as storied and valuable as Ho Hos, Ring Dings and Yodels. Within hours of announcing the closure Friday, the company already had put out word that Zingers, Fruit Pies and all the other brands were up for grabs.
Even if production really did stop, how long do you think it would take for some enterprising investor intoxicated by a cocktail of nostalgia and irony for the treats Mom used to pack in his GI Joe lunch box to find a way to roll out commemorative Twinkies? Special edition holiday Ho Hos? It’s just the nature of our product-centered world.
What would we lose if Twinkies fell off the culinary cliff, never to be seen or produced again?
Certainly few obesity-minded nutritionists would bemoan the loss. With some 500 million Twinkies produced a year, each packing 150 calories … well, let’s just leave it by saying that shaving 75 billion calories from the American diet sure could add up to a whole lot of skinny jeans.
Except that Twinkies aren’t merely a snack cake, nor just junk food. They are iconic in ways that transcend how Americans typically fetishize food. But ultimately, they fell victim to the fervor that created them.
Despite the many urban legends about the indestructibility of Twinkies and the many sadly true stories about the ingredients used to create them today, these treats once upon a time were the real deal.
They started out back in 1930, an era when people actually paid attention to seasonality in foods. James A. Dewar, who worked at Hostess predecessor Continental Baking Co. in Schiller, Ill., wanted to find a way to use the bakery’s shortbread pans year round. You see, the shortbread was filled with strawberries, but strawberries were available for only a few weeks a year.
So he used the oblong pans to bake spongecakes, which he then filled with banana cream. Bananas were a more regular crop.
Let’s pause so you can wrap your mind around that for a moment. Twinkies once contained real fruit.
All went swimmingly until World War II hit and rationing meant – say it with me – Yes! We have no bananas. And so was born the vanilla cream Twinkie, vastly more popular anyway.
Even then, there was a crafted element to these treats. The filling was added by hand using a foot pedal-powered pump. Pump too hard and the Twinkies exploded. These days you see that only when teenagers post YouTube videos of themselves microwaving them.
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