I thought about it after seeing it on tv but I said the same thing. I have not eaten Hostess for many many years so why rush out in the frenzy to buy any now. I wonder how many of the buyers are regular Hostess eating customers, and how many are getting caught up in the frenzy? Or maybe going to sell them on ebay?

I think this is the cake equivalent of Cher's farewell tour. They'll be gone for a while but someone somewhere will find a way to get them back on the market.

I was at Strack & Van Til yesterday and I saw a prominent display in the very first aisle you access for "Mrs.Freshleys Golden Creme Filled Cake". Normally I wouldn't give them a second look but because of Twinkie fever they caught my eye. I was able to refrain from buying them and thus saved myself from another episode of... "Why the hell did you buy that"?

I am sure that the majority of the buyer's yesterday, were not regular consumers of twinkies. If there were that many regular consumers of twinkies, or otherwise they would not be closing up shop. I am sure most of them were people that wanted to have twinkies just one more time, and people that planned to sell them on ebay. I heard a few weeks ago, there were already people trying to sell them on ebay for lots of money. I am not sure if they got what they were hoping to. I could see people on ebay trying to sell twinkies that were set to expire the next day, and not telling the buyer.

I have not seen it, but supposedly there is a clone of twinkies, which is sold at Walmart. Somebody will start making twinkies again, because at least 110 companies are interested in the company. I am pretty sure that they are not going to rehire the employees, and open up the factories again, although supposedly there are several grocery store chains that are interested in buying the company, and they probably don't have a factory already up and running. It is going to take a while before twinkies run off the assembly line again. Thanks, Nancy

Wal-Mart, Kroger among Hostess bidders

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ ... 7129.story

Artie wrote:I was at Strack & Van Til yesterday and I saw a prominent display in the very first aisle you access for "Mrs.Freshleys Golden Creme Filled Cake". Normally I wouldn't give them a second look but because of Twinkie fever they caught my eye. I was able to refrain from buying them and thus saved myself from another episode of... "Why the hell did you buy that"?

Mrs. Freshley products are some the WORST that I have ever tried. They truly make Little Debbie's look great.

Hi- I heard in the news last week, that Hostess is being sold to I believe Tastykake. Does anybody know anything more about this? I could not find a lot of info. on the internet about it. Thanks, Nancy

Hi- I just researched this further, and tastykake wants to purchase some of the breads, including Wonder bread. Apparently they are not interested in purchasing any of the snack cakes. THere are other companies that are interested in the snack cakes though.

NFriday wrote:Hi- I just researched this further, and tastykake wants to purchase some of the breads, including Wonder bread. Apparently they are not interested in purchasing any of the snack cakes. THere are other companies that are interested in the snack cakes though.

Actually, Flowers Foods, which owns Tastykake, will be the stalking horse bidder w/r/t the breads.

The Flowers purchase of the bread brands is not a rumor. It was announced by Flowers a while ago. This sort of thing would be reviewed by the government for antitrust implications and could be blocked though.

The snack cakes business is still up for sale.

An article in the 2/1/13 Trib business section updates the Twinkie saga, focusing on the inroads made by various rivals to the "classic" snack cake. The Trib staff also taste-tested five mass-produced substitutes, rated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being "sublime" and 1 being "on par with cardboard." A condensed version of their findings:
Nice! sponge cake (Walgreen's): 1.4
The Snack Artist creme cake (Safeway): 2.6
GreatValue golden creme cake (Wal-Mart): 2.6
Little Debbie cloud cakes: 2.8
Vachon golden sponge cakes (Jewel): 3.0

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013 ... ess-brands

I wonder if the original was on par with a 5.

Pie Lady wrote:I wonder if the original was on par with a 5.

Oops! Forgot to include that, as a control, the Trib asked the taste-testers to think of the original Twinkie as a 3.

Also that the Airstreams from Angel Food Bakery, mentioned by Stevez above, were featured in the article. From Stevez: "For the past several years, whenever I've had a craving for a Twinkie, I've headed to Angel Food Bakery to scratch the itch. Theirs are called something like Airstreams, because they come wrapped in foil and look like little Airstream trailers. The airstreams are made using high quality ingredients (at least, much higher quality than the chemical loaf that is the Twinkie) and require refrigeration. They also have their own versions of Hostess cupcakes and Ho Ho's. You're on your own when it comes to Wonder Bread."
Angel Food Bakery
1636 West Montrose
Chicago, IL 60613
(773) 728-1512

I smelled like nondairy cream filling, my fingers slick with oils. I felt spongy. I had eaten an entire box of Twinkies after school, a month’s ration of treats, and I was in a world of consequences. I stood in the kitchen stunned by my own lapse in control and surrounded by the evidence of my savagery. I watched the clock. My father was on the way home to a debris field of plastic wrappers and a boy with near crystalline blood sugar. When he arrived, inflated in his quilted parka, he saw the story quickly, and sighed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/magazine/my-twinkie-barricade.html?_r=0

Hi,

A link to instructions for DIY Hostess cupcakes: http://www.news-gazette.com/blogs/meg-m ... cakes.html

Regards,

According to The Braiser (via HuffPo), Hostess only received a single $360M bid, from Flowers Food of Georgia. Pending approval, they should be able to start cranking out delicious greasy little cakes shortly.

[edited since the Braiser was wrong]

Reuters wrote: Flowers Foods Inc is set to buy Wonder Bread and some other brands owned by Hostess Brands Inc for $360 million, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, giving the No. 2 U.S. baking company a bigger slice of the fast-consolidating bread business.

Pending approval from a U.S. bankruptcy court judge, Wonder Bread, along with Butternut, Home Pride, Merita and Nature's Pride, will go to Flowers after no other bidder stepped up to make a competing offer, the source said.
...
There will be an auction for the Beefsteak brand, for which Flowers bid $30 million, since Hostess received a higher bid from Mexico's Grupo Bimbo
...
Hostess expects to run two more auctions next month. One would be for the Hostess snack cake brands, including Twinkies and Dolly Madison, for which private equity firms Apollo Global Management LLC and C. Dean Metropoulos & Co set the bidding at $410 million.
...
The other auction would be for its Drake's cake business and additional bread brands. So far, McKee Foods, maker of Little Debbie snack cakes, offered $27.5 million for Drake's, which includes Ring Dings, Yodels and Devil Dogs.

United States Bakery Inc, also known as Franz Family Bakery, agreed to pay $28.85 million for the Sweetheart, Eddy's, Standish Farms and Grandma Emilie's bread brands.

(source)

JoelF wrote:According to The Braiser (via HuffPo), Hostess only received a single $360M bid, from Flowers Food of Georgia. Pending approval, they should be able to start cranking out delicious greasy little cakes shortly.

Not exactly - that's for the majority of the bread brands, with the auction about to be underway for the Beefsteak brand. The bid deadlines/auction for snack cake products is next month (March 11 & 12 to be exact, with possible auctions on March 13 and 15).

edited to note that Bimbo was the winning bidder for the Beefsteak brand.

BR wrote:

JoelF wrote:According to The Braiser (via HuffPo), Hostess only received a single $360M bid, from Flowers Food of Georgia. Pending approval, they should be able to start cranking out delicious greasy little cakes shortly.

Not exactly - that's for the majority of the bread brands, with the auction about to be underway for the Beefsteak brand. The bid deadlines/auction for snack cake products is next month (March 11 & 12 to be exact, with possible auctions on March 13 and 15).

edited to note that Bimbo was the winning bidder for the Beefsteak brand.

Not exactly. Right now, Grupo Bimbo has the high bid. However, Flowers has the "stalking horse" and has the opportunity to make a final bid as does anyone wlse who wants to make a higher bid.

In two weeks, we'll know for sure.

jlawrence01 wrote:

BR wrote:

JoelF wrote:According to The Braiser (via HuffPo), Hostess only received a single $360M bid, from Flowers Food of Georgia. Pending approval, they should be able to start cranking out delicious greasy little cakes shortly.

Not exactly - that's for the majority of the bread brands, with the auction about to be underway for the Beefsteak brand. The bid deadlines/auction for snack cake products is next month (March 11 & 12 to be exact, with possible auctions on March 13 and 15).

edited to note that Bimbo was the winning bidder for the Beefsteak brand.

Not exactly. Right now, Grupo Bimbo has the high bid. However, Flowers has the "stalking horse" and has the opportunity to make a final bid as does anyone wlse who wants to make a higher bid.

In two weeks, we'll know for sure.

You're wrong and I don't know where you're getting your info . . . but it's not correct. Bimbo was the high bidder for Beefsteak. That auction took place this morning and is over. Bimbo bid $31.9 million and Flowers elected not to increase from their SH bid. Flowers won other bread brands b/c there was no other acceptable bid to match Flowers' $360 million bid (and thus no auction). Now, neither of these sales has closed so the process is not 100% complete, but the auction process is over.

There is much incorrect information throughout this thread sadly, but only some merits a response.

I've been completely unaffected by the loss of Hostess - a fact that would be shocking to my teenage self, I'm sure. I used to worship those fruit pies, and the orange cupcakes especially. A cure was effected when I nostalgically bought a lemon pie some ten years ago - what I remembered as being sublimely delicious was over-sweet and tasting of chemicals. That ended all temptation for me!

I'm much more saddened by the loss of Mother's. Sure, you can still buy various renditions of the frosted animal crackers, but it's just not the same. And the iced raisin cookies (odd that I loved them considering how much I loathe raisins) are just gone forever.

Twinkies return expected by summer, new Hostess owner says

Twinkies return expected by summer, new Hostess owner says

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ ... 4303.story

Twinkies expected on the shelves by July 15th: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/06/ ... s-july-15/

Based on the outpouring of nostalgia sparked by its demise, Hostess is expecting a blockbuster return next month for Twinkies and other sugary treats, such as CupCakes and Donettes. The company says the cakes will taste the same but that the boxes will now bear the tag line "The Sweetest Comeback In The History Of Ever."

While some wait for the Twinkie, I wait for a Ho-Ho.

Regards,

New Owner: Drake's Cakes Also Returning Soon

...
Drake's cakes, meanwhile, were snapped up by longtime Hostess rival McKee Foods, which makes Little Debbie snacks. McKee said in an email Monday that Drake's cakes should be back by "late summer/early fall." The company says it will start with a selection of Drake's products and see whether to bring back more products after that.

...

Notably, McKee Foods has gone head-to-head with Hostess on a variety of products. Its "Cloud Cakes" for example, bear a striking resemblance to Twinkies. And now it owns Drake's Devil Dogs and Yodels, which look a lot like its Little Debbie Devil Cremes and Swiss Rolls, respectively. But McKee says it isn't necessarily phasing out products that seem similar to each other.

"Similar is just that — similar, not the same," McKee spokesman Mike Gloekler wrote in an email.

...

A spokesman for Flowers Foods, Keith Hancock, said the company is still waiting for final approval from the Department of Justice for its purchase of Wonder and other breads. Flowers already makes a variety of bread brands, including Nature's Own and Cobblestone Mill, as well as snack cakes such as Tastykake and Mrs. Freshley's.
...

Cathy2 wrote:While some wait for the Twinkie, I wait for a Ho-Ho.

Regards,

Me too. Ho-Hos are even superior to Ding-Dongs.

Twinkies, Hostess snacks back in stores today

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-twinkies-20130715,0,6952668.story

Hi- Does anybody know if Wonder bread is coming back? There is somebody over on Jill Cataldo's couponing site, that misses their rye bread, and has not found a suitable substitute. She does not care for Rosen's. Thanks, Nancy

NFriday wrote:Hi- Does anybody know if Wonder bread is coming back? There is somebody over on Jill Cataldo's couponing site, that misses their rye bread, and has not found a suitable substitute. She does not care for Rosen's. Thanks, Nancy

Yes, Wonder is coming back. This part of the process was delayed some because the Department of Justice was reviewing the proposed sale to Flowers Foods but recently gave its approval. The sale should be completed shortly (next few weeks or so), at which time I would expect Flowers Foods to announce when you can expect Wonder Bread (and Nature's Pride) to be back on supermarket shelves.

Hi- I am watching the 10:00 PM news on Channel 5, and they just announced that Twinkie sales are booming right now, and the new version of Trinkies has a shelf life of 45 days now.

I just ate a new Twinkie and I now wish it hadn't been resurrected. The new version makes the "original" seem like an all natural home made product by comparison.