Thread: Twinkies Prepping for Bankruptcy

January 9, 2012, 5:40 PM.

Twinkies Prepping for Bankruptcy: Everything You Need to Know.

By Shira Ovide

Hostess Brands, the creator of magical marvels of modern science such as Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Wonder Bread, is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection, Deal Journal colleagues Mike Spector and Julie Jargon are reporting.

If Hostess tips into bankruptcy, it would be the second trip into Chapter 11 for the company. (In legal parlance, the second time around is referred to as “Chapter 22.” Get it?)

Here is a rundown of highlights and lowlights of Hostess’s history so far.

So Many Treats: In addition to the aforementioned Twinkies and Wonder Bread, Hostess Brands also makes schoolyard favorites Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, Suzy Q’s, Fruit Pies, Sno Balls, Dolly Madison Zingers and Drake’s cakes. (We’ve always wondered: Aren’t Suzy Q’s essentially the same as Ding Dongs, which are the same as Ho Hos, which are the same as Drake’s Rings Dings, also owned by Hostess?) And lest you think Hostess is just stuffing our faces with junk, the company also owns healthier brands such as Nature’s Pride breads.

Origins of the Twinkie: James A. Dewar was a manager of a Chicago-area Continental Baking Co. plant in 1930, when he got the idea of injecting cakes with cream filing. He said he came up with the name for his invention when he saw a billboard in St. Louis for “Twinkle Toe Shoes.” Dewar started his career driving a horse-drawn pound cake wagon and retired in 1972 with the unofficial title of “Mr. Twinkie.” He died in 1985, at the age of 88.

Half Baked: Belt-tightening in the 1940s led to a shortage of metals, and that meant no blades for bread slicers. To work around the shortage, Wonder Bread began to sell bags of unsliced loafs. In 1980, the Center for Science in the Public Interest — the scolds that ruined all the fun of eating movie popcorn and soda– complained that Wonder Bread’s ad slogan at the time was misleading. The statement: Wonder Bread has “nutrition that even whole wheat cannot beat.” Wonder Bread spiked the TV commercial.

Think Twinkies Will Live Forever? We’ve all heard the jokes. They go something like this: Twinkies have a half-life longer than Plutonium 239. In fourth grade, your Deal Journal blogger had a teacher who claimed the classroom had kept the same Twinkie on a high shelf for more than a decade, and it was fresh as a daisy. But a company executive told the New York Times in 2000: ”The Twinkie is on the shelf no more than 7 to 10 days. The shelf life of Wonder Bread is even shorter,” about two days.

Chapter 11, Take One: Hostess, then known as Interstate Bakeries, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004. The company then blamed Americans’ shift to low-carb foods. Analysts said don’t hate the sugar, hate the game. They said the company’s persistently higher labor costs, management and accounting problems and stagnant innovation were the culprits. (We again mention the Ring Dings, Zingers, Ding Dongs, Ho Hos and Suzie Q’s.) The company stayed in bankruptcy for more than four years, a long stretch for court-sheltered reorganization. Now, Hostess Brands is grappling with a steep debt load, high labor costs and rising costs for commodities including sugar and flour.

We’re Here All Week. Tip Your Servers: During the course of the bankruptcy filing, supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle and Mexican bakery giant Grupo Bimbo teamed up to try to buy the company. If they had succeeded, we might have been eating a Bimbo Twinkie.

And the Show About Nothing, Even Baked Goods: We leave you, dear reader, witha scene from “Seinfeld” centered around Drake’s, the New York-region treats company owned by Hostess Brands. Drake’s pastries in certain circles are apparently a currency more valuable than cigarettes in prison.

Random Note: Your Deal Journal blogger found it hard to find Twinkies for purchase in reputable stores in New York City. But we did find Weight Watchers Twinkie-like products.

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/01/0...-need-to-know/

Well, they got plenty of my money when I was a kid and in college. Sorry to see them going under, but their products are so unhealthy.

W