Don't fret, snackers: the Twinkie isn't going anywhere
Last week a dark cloud rolled in over the world’s snack lovers, churning and booming and threatening to wipe clean perhaps the most prominent junk food of them all.
After more than eight decades in business, Hostess Brands, weighed by mounting debt and management turmoil, announced it would cease operations. Immediately, this appeared to mean one thing: farewell, Twinkie.
Indeed, the prospect of that iconic sponge-cake-and-cream dessert being wiped from stores was enough to throw consumers into fits, but then, this is the Twinkie we’re talking here.
If the snack can supposedly survive a nuclear holocaust, definitely survive 30 years on a shelf, bet that it can triumph over a bout of bankruptcy, too.
Certainly, when news of Hostess’ pending doom broke last week, snackers panicked, fearful that should they not act now, never will a Twinkie again meet their lips.
*Bing: How many calories is in a Twinkie?
Boxes of the snacks began to pop up on eBay – just $21 million for this box from one of the last days of Hostess production – and shoppers started to eulogize the Twinkie, a beloved treat that too soon was to meet its end.
Eh, not so fast.
In a twist of sweet mercy not known to the crunch of bankruptcy court, the Twinkie brand may just survive Hostess’ plunge.
Last Friday, Hostess decided it could not survive a conventional Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring – that is to say, it was so broke it couldn’t be fixed – so it opted instead for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which will allow it to sell off its assets.
While Hostess will no longer be if this arrangement is agreed upon by the courts, it will still be able to sell its brands, including Twinkies, to the highest bidder.
“There’s a huge amount of goodwill with the commercial brand name,” one University of Michigan Law School professor told CNBC. “It’s quite conceivable that they can sell the name and recipe for Twinkies to a company that wants to make them.”
Hearings will begin today before a bankruptcy judge, though the fate of the famous snack won’t be known for at least six months*.
The Twinkie, though, unlike parent company Hostess, is likely to survive.
By Jason Buckland, MSN Money
*Twinkies are made in Canada by Vachon, a division of Montreal-based Saputo, Inc. Canadian production of Twinkies will not be affected by the bankruptcy proceedings of Hostess in the U.S.
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