The Tragic Story of Twinkies: How America Buried 18,500 Bakers and Called It a Comeback

For most of the twentieth century, the most recognized piece of food in the United States was a small golden sponge cake with three little holes punched into its underside. Five hundred million of them came out of American ovens every year. On the morning of November 16, 2012, the company that baked them told eighteen thousand five hundred employees that every bakery it owned was closing that day, forever. Within forty eight hours the shelves of every supermarket in America were stripped bare. Boxes that had cost three dollars were selling online for hundreds. Eight months later, the cake came back. The eighteen thousand five hundred people did not. This is the story of the Twinkie. How a Canadian delivery boy invented it in a Chicago bakery in 1930 because he could not stand to watch a machine sit still. How it survived a war, a courtroom, and four decades of owners who treated a bakery as a line item. And how the comeback that America celebrated was, for almost everyone who had actually made the thing, a funeral. ABOUT FALLEN FLAVORS Fallen Flavors tells the stories of the American food brands that shaped a century of eating and traveling, and the quiet decisions, mergers, and shifts that erased them. New documentaries every week. If this story moved you, subscribe. There are other giants who fell. We tell their stories one at a time, so they are not forgotten. Sourced from public records, historical press archives, and business filings. #Twinkies #Hostess #FallenFlavors #BusinessHistory #FoodHistory