Alas, Poor Twinkie!

After the news broke that Hostess Brands, the parent company of Wonder Bread, was going out of business, I decided to buy a loaf for old time's sake - not for consumption, but to mix with white glue to make the craft dough that unleashed so much creativity when my children were small.

Wonder Bread is apparently not a favorite at our local store, because this array barely changed from morning to night. I snapped a photo early and went back in the evening to get the bread, glue and food coloring. The shelves were still full and I picked up a loaf, but after finding no food color, I put it back. Literal "white bread" art objects are pretty dull.

Not many people were grabbing Twinkies either at the store, which has a mostly Latino customer base. Maybe Twinkies are not as iconic in Guatemala or Honduras as they are over here.

Drake's Cakes are also a Hostess Brands product. I used to have a soft spot for their Coffee Cakes until Entenmann's Ultimate Crumb Cake came along. And in my youth TastyKakes Butterscotch Krimpets were only available in Pennsylvania, where I visited my Aunt Kay and Uncle Lou each summer. When distribution began in New Jersey, they displaced all other confections in my childhood pantheon of cheap treats.

Nowadays, with Top Pot doughnuts, cake pops and high-grade Italian cookies only a bus ride away in Westfield, all packaged and preservative-laden baked goods are on a lower rung of the munchies ladder.

So farewell, Hostess Brands. Thanks for the memories. Someone in the Courier News newsroom used to have a Twinkie enshrined on his desk. For all we know, it is still on his desk at the Asbury Park Press a couple of decades later.

--Bernice