The demise of the Twinkie
Twinkie, Twinkie, pastry star, how we wonder…what the heck happened?
Hostess Brands was recently approved to shut down and start selling assets, following the company’s falling sales and inability to formulate an agreement with the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM). This actually isn’t the first time bankruptcy has come up—the first suit filed was in 2004, and there was another financial shake-up in 2009, when Hostess formally changed its name to Hostess Brands.
The Hostess shutdown means the loss of approximately 18,000 jobs in bakeries throughout the United States. This is unfortunate, but I blame the union, management and changing times for the lost jobs.
The newest story about Hostess declaring bankruptcy retold a story of how the baker’s union, in an attempt to create more jobs, began setting up stringent rules governing who could do what.
Suppose we had a bakery making bread and cakes. Given the new rules, there would have to be separate bus drivers, one for the breads and one for the cakes, just to provide two different jobs, even if financially it would make more sense for the company to have one driver deliver both to the same warehouse.
The second issue was the way money was being spent. Last month, a judge in the case approved bonuses for the executives of Hostess totaling $1.8 million, which caused outrage among former employees, who were watching retirement benefits getting cut, and caused many watching the news to scratch their heads. Wasn’t the company facing bankruptcy again?
But ultimately what destroyed Hostess were the falling profits, or rather, what the falling profits represented. There has been a shift in America away from junk food, including Twinkies, Ding Dongs and other Hostess confections.
People in my generation don’t view these treats as the icons our parents and grandparents did. In the 1950s, Twinkies rose to popularity because Hostess sponsored the “Howdy Doody Show,” featuring a Twinkie in a cowboy hat and boots, thus securing its place as an icon and lunchtime staple. An even more incredible example came ten years later, during the nuclear scares, when Twinkies gained even more popularity when people joked that the treats supposedly could outlast a nuclear bomb. Apparently ridiculousness does sell, and the Twinkies rose to fame because of their “indestructible” status.
Compare all of that to today’s concern with dieting, exercise and obesity prevention, and it’s easy to see how Twinkies and the like have lost popularity.
The shift has been away from such products, and the company couldn’t keep up with the financial demands placed on it. So, Hostess Brands fell apart, and the once-glorious Twinkies are now becoming relics of the past.
So, if Armageddon does come, I guess we’re just plain out of luck.
