The Twinkie: A treat shaped by current events

The legendary Twinkie, once America’s most irresistible shortcake, started out as a toss-off product created to mark time until strawberry season.

The maker, now known as Hostess Brands, introduced the cake in 1933 literally because they had a bunch of shortcake pans not being used. The company’s main product was a shortcake filled with strawberry cream. After strawberry season ended, there were plenty of pans but no product — or sales.

Company vice president, James A. Dewar, decided to make a simple sponge cake and fill it with banana cream. (Legend has it that he named the confection Twinkies because he noticed a sign for Twinkie Toe Shoes.)

But current events and customer preferences intervened to change the new treat.  Bananas were rationed in Word War II and banana Twinkies became hard to source. So the company whipped up a sugary vanilla flavor so beloved that banana never returned.

Twinkie sales soared throughout the 1950s, due in part to Hostess’ sponsorship of the children’s TV show, “Howdy Doody.” Twinkies made the movies, too, most notably 1984’s “Ghostbusters,” in which Egon Spengler uses a Twinkie to explain psychokinetic energy.

In 1979, Twinkies made unanticipated headlines during the trial of Dan White, who killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. White’s lawyer argued that White had grown increasingly withdrawn and depressed from gorging on sugary foods, including Twinkies. The argument that White suffered from his changed eating habits helped bargain his sentence down to manslaughter. This decision soon became known as the “Twinkie Defense.”

Throughout subsequent decades, however, the product maintained its acclaim. In 1999 President Bill Clinton even included a Twinkie in the Millennium Time Capsule.
When Hostess filed for bankruptcy in 2012, devoted Twinkie fans snapped up every package they could find. Mere months later, store shelves throughout the nation brimmed with Twinkies again.

Today, the Twinkie is an authentic icon in American business history.