Field of Science

Hostess memories

Hostess is going out of business.  Wow!  That evokes some strong childhood memories.  There was a Hostess factory near where my Father worked, and they had a day-old shop where all the Hostess products that came back on the delivery trucks were sold greatly discounted; in those days packages of Twinkies and Cupcakes were 20 for a dollar, and worth every cent.  As a result of the economics, my parents bought these quantity and froze them.  Literally every day a Twinkie, a Cupcake, or a Snowball, a hemispherical cupcake with an elastic, spongy, coconut covered overcoat sometimes in pink(!), would show up in my lunch, sometimes with the luscious cream filling still frozen by lunch time so you could easily eat around it saving it for last.  My Mother was an excellent baker, but for 2.5 cents a day, it was hard to argue for homemade, and duh, we were kids.  However my adult reaction beyond the childhood nostalgia is to say, "So what?"  TPP hasn't purchased a Hostess product in at least 30 years having probably consumed a life time of sugar by the end of grade school.  My last recollection of buying a Hostess product was a big box of HoHos that were taken as a "Hostess gift" to a "Bad Taste" theme party (a twofer of bad taste).  The news reports that Hostess blames their workers' union, a corporate meme so popular of late, but did it ever occur to them that the world was changing and their gag-worthy, overly-sugared confections and squeezably soft and mushy bread were no longer very popular in a more health and sugar-conscious consumer world?  What?  Could it be our crummy product?  No, the corporation can never take the blame.  So long Hostess.  Yes, there are some fond memories, but not a tear will be shed.  

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