For many people Hostess snacks were a part of childhood. If you grew up in the 1970s
and 1980s you enjoyed the treats and the colorful mascots like Twinkie the Kid and Fruit Pie
the Magician who promoted them. Here's some of our favorites - the Top 10 Hostess Snacks
Ranked From Worst to Best.
Chocodiles
Fudge covered Twinkies were known as Chocodiles, but when they reappeared in 2014 the name
had changed and the featured crocodile mascot on the package was nowhere to be found. There
was a "dark time" for fans of Hostess snack cakes when many of the fun mascots were nixed.
Chauncey Chocodile has been fired, but Twinkie the Kid is still acceptable. The official
description of a chocolate covered Twinkie is "chocolate coated sponge cake with creamy
filling," and unlike most Hostess cakes, this chocolate covered treat had a loyal following,
but not necessarily a large following. Because of this sad fact, this snack cake was absent
from store shelves for years. A fudge covered Twinkie was brought back in 2014, but it is
no longer sold on the East Coast of the United States. Thankfully, Hostess fans in the Western
states can still enjoy a Chocodile...fudge covered Twinkie.
Hostess Fruit Pies
Hostess fruit pies now are only available in apple and cherry flavor, but they used
to have other flavors like blueberry, blackberry, peach and lemon. These flavors were standard
back when Fruit Pie the Magician was in his heyday as the Hostess mascot. He had a good
run that lasted from 1973 until 2006. This magician presided over perhaps the most unhealthy
of the Hostess snack cakes. Hostess fruit pies are more a meal than a snack, but an
unbalanced one with little nutritional value to recommend them. Despite being calorie bombs,
there are a number of websites that offer recipes to make your own homemade version
of this Hostess treat. You can make the standard flavors like apple and cherry, but the fillings
you choose are really only limited by your imagination and the ingredients you can get
your hands on. While many customers were happy when Hostess products appeared back on store
shelves in 2013 after filing for bankruptcy in 2012, not everyone was happy with the pies.
Some long time Hostess lovers complained that the fruit filling in the pies was "squishy"
and "flat.". The taste and consistency of some of the cakes have been questioned by
customers, although generally they're happy Hostess cakes came back.
Donettes
These mini doughnuts come in a variety of flavors, but the most popular include chocolate
frosted, powdered sugar and crunch. However, you can also find glazed, double chocolate,
cinnamon crunch, strawberry and carrot cake - although these last 2 flavors seem hard
to come by. The trick with these little doughnuts is to not eat too many. They're so easy to
pop into your mouth that, before you know it, you could munch on a dozen or so. Donettes
come in 3 oz packages of six or in larger 10 oz bags that have twelve. It's these bags
that can get you into trouble because the little guys are just sitting there in a row.
Perhaps the only issue with Donettes is that they can make a pretty big mess for such little
treats. The powdered sugar gets, well, everywhere and don't even try to find all the little
crumbs that scatter from the delicious crunch flavored Donettes. These are snack food problems
that we just have to learn to accept if we're going to continue to enjoy these tasty treats,
and we know we certainly are.
Hostess Suzy Q
The Hostess Suzy Q is easy to love. Who wouldn't love generous slices of chocolate cake with
cream filling in between? Hostess introduced the Suzy Q in 1961, but like other Hostess
snack cakes, it disappeared from store shelves in 2012 in the wake of bankruptcy proceedings.
Suzy Qs reappeared in 2013 and things were ok for a few years, but then in 2016 Hostess
decided to update the delicious snack cake by reducing the amount of cream filling and
generally making the treats less tasty. Fans of the treat registered their displeasure
on social media, claiming that Hostess had ruined the snack. The company responded to
the outcry asking for patience and promising that Suzy Qs would soon be made right. Hostess
marketed the revamped cake with the line: "Now even better tasting," and the company
insisted this new version had 50% more cake and 50% more cream filling. Can we trust these
numbers? It seems like they are smaller than they used to be regardless of these attempts
to say otherwise.
Hostess Cupcakes
Hostess Cupcakes are a snack cake produced and distributed by Hostess Brands. The most
popular and widely recognizable of these snacks is the chocolate cupcake with chocolate icing
and vanilla creme filling. It's then topped with distinctive white frosting squiggles
across the top. That said, other flavors have been offered over the years. Other than the
original Chocolate flavor, Orange CupCakes, Red Velvet CupCakes are also sold year round.
But there have been numerous Limited Edition and Seasonal Only releases of different flavors
to coincide with events and holidays. Some of the cooler ones being the ScaryCakes for
Halloween and the I Love You Cakes for Valentines Days. Hostess has claimed it to be the first
commercially produced cupcake and has become an iconic American brand. Hostess CupCakes
were marketed heavily for a period and some of the commercials were pretty amazing. Often
featuring someone or something asking, "Hey, where's the cream filling?" after poking through
something that looks like a Hostess Cupcake, but isn't.
Zingers
Hostess owns another well known snack cake company called Dolly Madison. Dolly Madison
came out with zingers snack cake, but it became part of the Hostess line when the company
that bought Hostess in 2013 also acquired the rights to Dolly Madison products. Prior
to its association with Hostess, Dolly Madison had been known for its use of the Peanuts
characters in its advertising campaigns. Zingers are a slightly squared off Twinkie-like cake
with the addition of frosting on top. They come in chocolate, vanilla and raspberry.
It's the raspberry flavor that is interesting, because Hostess didn't really have a cake
like this. A yellow cake with cream filling is covered in a sweet raspberry syrup. It
has the added little touch of a dusting of shredded coconut to complete it. Also, since
Hostess has dropped most of the mascot advertising, the Peanut characters are no longer a part
of Zingers appeal. Hostess could bring back its classic mascots and team them up with
the Peanuts for a snack cake marketing extravaganza.
Sno Balls
Sno Balls are a bit of an oddball among the Hostess snack cake ensemble. These cakes were
introduced after the Second World War when Americans were freed from the restrictions
imposed on treats because of sugar and flour rationing. The original version of Sno Balls
had shredded coconut sprinkled on top of marshmallow frosting with a chocolate cake at its core.
They lacked the cream filling, which wasn't added until 1950. The combination of marshmallow
and coconut gives Sno Balls a kind of retro feel that no other Hostess snack cake has.
A little bit later, the coconut of one cake in a package of 2 was colored pink. Eventually,
Hostess realized it made more sense to color the cakes the same so both the Sno Balls were
colored pink. Over the years Hostess has sold Sno Balls in many different colors that often
celebrate particular holidays or seasons such as green for St. Patrick's Day, orange for
Halloween, white for Winter and lavender for Spring. There were also blue Sno Balls put
out as part of a promotional campaign for the movie Monsters vs. Aliens. These odd little
cakes have had their share of attention in popular culture with appearances in a wide
range of television shows and movies. It's probably their relative uniqueness, as far
as snack cakes go, that have made Hostess Sno Balls a long time favorite for many.
Ho Hos
This delicious Hostess snack cake is similar to Little Debbie's Swiss Roll snack cake.
These cakes are a cylindrical chocolate cake based on a spiral design with cream filling
and a chocolate coating. In the 1970s Hostess introduced a mascot for the tasty snack cake
called Happy Ho Ho. Happy wore an outfit reminiscent of Robin Hood's costume complete with a feather
in his hat. Ho Hos used come wrapped in foil to protect the delicate chocolate coating.
Hostess lovers have also been able to get seasonal flavors like peppermint Ho Hos during
the Christmas season. Other Ho Ho variations were introduced in 2003 and 2004; both offered
caramel filling in addition to the standard cream filling. However, like most variations
of cakes, cookies, and candies, these caramel Ho Hos don't seem to be worthy of the effort.
Ho Hos, like many Hostess snack cakes, are pretty perfect as they've always been and
weren't in any need of "improvement."
Ding Dongs
If you grew up on the East Coast of the United States before the 1990s you probably grew
up knowing about Hostess Big Wheels. You might have described the snack as being similar
to a Drake's Ring Ding. In fact, these 2 snacks have a pretty crazy intertwining history together.
Hostess originally marketed Ding Dongs on the East Coast as Big Wheels, to avoid confusion
with Ring Dings, pre-existing similar snacks cakes by Drake's. In the late 80's however,
the two snack cakes were consolidated during a merger of the 2 companies, solving the Ring
Ding – Ding Dong conflict between Drake's and Hostess's parent company. This merger
did not last very long and after the split, Hostess could no longer use the name Ding
Dong, where ever Ring Ding's were available. But as fate would have it, in the late 90s,
Hostess's parent company purchased Drake's, and ever since then, Hostess has been selling
their Big Wheel snacks under the name Ding Dongs, that we all know and love today. The
snack cake itself is a simple but delicious treat: a round chocolate cake that resembles
a hockey puck with a white creamy filling injected into the center. The cake is covered
in a layer of what Hostess calls a "chocolate glaze."
Twinkies
A baker named James Dewar who was working for the Continental Baking Company invented
the Twinkie in 1930. Dewar was inspired by the fact that some of the machines used to
make strawberry shortcake were left idle when strawberries were out of season. He came up
with a snack cake filled with banana cream. He named his new cake the Twinkie. When bananas
were rationed during the Second World War, the company switched to a vanilla cream filling.
From then on the Twinkie was described as "a golden sponge cake with creamy filling."
The banana cream filled Twinkie was brought back in earnest in 2005 as part of a promotion
for the movie King Kong. They proved to be so popular that Hostess put them back into
its snack cake line. There have been a number of other Twinkie variations including chocolate
and strawberry. Twinkies have appeared in many movies over the years, making memorable
appearances in Ghostbusters, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Die Hard, even the Disney
movie Wall-E had a Twinkie look-a-like snack. And of course who could forget the endless
chase for Twinkies in the movie Zombieland. Hostess cakes, including the beloved Twinkie,
was absent from store shelves for a while after the company filed for bankruptcy, but
thankfully, Twinkie the Kid rode again in 2013.
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