Is Twinkie Smucker’s Numero Uno or No-No?

Letter to Philippians: The Twinkie was born 1930 in a Sweet Home Chicago burb but leave it to conglomerate Smuckers to buy out Grandpa Hostess & let greed muck up the snack delight’s shelf life & financial legacy …

Don’t blame the messenger, the WSJ, whose bad news was titled, “Why Smucker’s $5 Billion Bet on the Twinkie Flopped.” The article elaborates a horror story snack aficionados can appreciate: After the ballyhooed acquisition by outbidding other salivating food companies, the paper reports, Smuckers quickly learned “the snack’s 65-day shelf life as well as changing consumer habits” … triggered by COVID & helped along by the Trump Administration’s push for “healthy” eats … had creamed its bottom line. Instead of further fueling Smuckers’ legendary profits, the legendary Twinkie was eating them. No longer was Mark Smucker, chief executive of the giant, able to say as he did after biting into the crème puff he purchased in 2024, “It tastes like growth.” Someone, it seems, forgot to warn him Twinkies aren’t like the sweet jams & dog food Smuckers was used to marketing & a whole new distribution chain had to be invented. The good news is that Smuckers is too big to fail because of a Twinkie & it says its lesson in greed has not only been digested but will result in even bigger profits in the future …

Let’s hope so because the Twinkie’s history is right up there with Chicago’s giving birth to Cracker Jack & the Chicago-style Hot Dog at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. It was on April 6, 1930 that the Twinkie was invented in Schiller Park at a Continental Baking Company plant. A bakery manager, James Dewar, noticed costly strawberry fillings in shortcake were getting moldy during off season periods, so he substituted banana cream for the fruit. The company switched to vanilla cream during WWII when there was a global banana shortage … the rest is history. Psst. Does anyone care Chicago’s iconic deep-dish pizza was invented in 1943 by Pizzeria Uno? State-of-the-Art deep-dish competitors … Duo’s, Gino’s East, Lou Malnatti’s & Giordano’s … surely care as does any pizza lover!

Davd Soul