Posted on 11/18/2012 7:51:43 AM PST by jdsteel
I went to buy some Ho Ho’s but they were gone, and so was a part of America.
When I heard that Hostess was declaring bankruptcy it made me sad. Probably not as sad at the 18,000 people that used to work for them but it did affect me.
Oh, I knew that I was partly to blame. When I was a child I would gobble down Ho Ho’s and chocolate cupcakes with abandon. I could burn through a half of a box of Ho Ho’s and a half gallon of Vitamin D milk in about 15 minutes. My elementary school lunches were almost always peanut butter sandwiches made with Wonder Bread. I was a happy repeat customer even if my mom was the one that did the buying. Now, like most baby boomers I try to keep sweets, fat and carbohydrates to a minimum. Pasta is a guilty pleasure and the snacks made by Hostess just aren’t worth the extra time on the treadmill to me. I am sure that I am not alone with these changes to my life and my diet.
Still, when I heard the last straws that broke the back of the once mighty Hostess were the deadly combination of unions and Obamacare I decided to buy one last box of Ho Ho’s for old time’s sake. So off I went to my local Giant Eagle, the largest supermarket in my suburb of Pittsburgh.
By the time I got to the grocery store the shelves that once held Hostess products were laid bare. All that were left were a few sad looking Sno Balls. Gone were the Ho Ho’s, the Ding Dongs, the Donettes. Gone were the Dolly Madison cakes and yes, gone were the Twinkies.
A woman standing beside me in the grocery aisle turned to me and said “I can’t understand the people that blame our current President for Hostess’s problems. Twinkies are so good I can’t believe some other company won’t start to make them”.
I looked at her and said “Hostess said that if they were to survive the costs of Obamacare the unions would have to renegotiate their contracts, and they wouldn’t do it. So they are shutting it down. For 10 years after the steel mills closed here in Pittsburgh I kept hearing about how the mills were coming back and so were all of those jobs. Guess what; they didn’t”.
I had gone to the store to buy some Ho Ho’s but they were gone, and so was a part of America.
It’s Moochelle Obama’s fault. She wants you to eat peas instead.
Somewhere in her forest bunker the great Sasquatch that is Moochelle is eating them all now.
If we were to bet on winners and losers, I think Hostess would have been a better bet than Fisker Motors, GM, or Solyndra. Besides, Congress is full of Twinkies, Ho-Ho’s, Zingers, and Fruit Pies - a Twinkie bailout should have been a no-brainer. What may happen now, a Mexican company will likely buy the brand and start importing back to the US. Maybe they will partner with the pot-drug cartels and satify ‘the munchies’ when they create ‘the munchies’.
All the Ho Hos work for Barry Benghazi now. Check the Sunday morning talk shows. They’ll be the ones with their pockets full of condoms.
My great gram lived with me from ages 93 to 96. Several times I accidently left a full box of twinkies out and went on with the day. When I remembered to check they would all be gone. She literally would eat the whole box over several hours...LOL.... Only happened a few times but we still laugh about it. She lived to age 97. Sadly she had a fall and broke both her hips so her last few months were spent in a nursing home. We still would sneak her some twinkies though.
“For 10 years after the steel mills closed here in Pittsburgh I kept hearing about how the mills were coming back and so were all of those jobs.”
Yeah, I remember those days too. College buddies of mine lived in and around “the Burgh”. Pittsburgh & surrounding areas slowly emptied out and all the while those remaining clung to rumors that this mill or that was going to reopen. I suspect that they knew it wasn’t true but a pretty lie is a seductive thing.
Then they came for...
We also tried to secure some Twinkies and Ho Hos. No luck either. We checked about twenty places, and there wasn’t a single Hostess product left.
Wait until the union workers reach the time when the excitement is over and they are home and jobless.
She can’t understand...
Obama’s America doesn’t deserve the Twinkie.
That is from a different time and place.
Obama’s America deserves dirt.
But to the degree that their demise was caused by filthy,despicable,pig excrement Maoist union leaders I just want to....well,I won't go on.Don't wanna be banned.
All I have to say to those union leaders and to the workers who stayed out until the end...I hope every one of you *and* all your family members starve to death!
LOL...Well said!
The problem was that neither Gus or George at the loading dock could ever load the Ho-Ho’s. Neither could Bob the truck driver. They had to call Morty, the only designated Ho-Ho loader, who might be in a good mood to load Ho-Ho’s or a bad mood. If Morty wasn’t there, then the craftsman (you had to be with the right union and have the right credentials) replacement had to show the union badge he was ok.
To be honest, you could have hired two guys from the ‘hood’ to load Ho-Ho’s for the same price that you were paying Morty, but it’s best not to bring up this topic. The ‘hood’ guys would have been fairly happy...shown up on time....and would have been willing to be drug-tested if you required it. But you couldn’t hire them because they weren’t specially qualified and hooked to the union.
Here’s the final tabulation that you need to make. They will eventually sell the name and recipe for Ho-Ho’s to Little Debbie (my humble guess). The Little Debbie folks....using non-union labor and trucking....will turn millions in profit for 2013...bringing us their version of Ho-Hos’s.
The loser in all this mess? The little guys named Morty who were the private union loader at the dock for Ho-Hos. It’s hard to find another job like that...that payed so well...and you never really appreciated the job or the stupidity that the Unions attached to it.
If you get desperate for Twinkies, you can make your own ... I didn’t know that there are ‘canoe’ baking pans so you can get the Twinkie shape, but found the pan online yesterday ... learn something new all the time! :-)
My favorites are Twinkies and when I told my mom they were liquidating, no more Twinkies, she sort of did the ‘uh huh’ number .... suddenly she looked up with sharp attention ... “wait a minute, NO more Ho Ho’s?” I had to tell her that was the sad fact. She’s not a happy camper. I’m sure someone will come up with a Ho Ho’s recipe so you can make your own of those as well as Twinkies .... but they will never be as good as the ‘originals’.
“...I hope every one of you *and* all your family members starve to death!”
What a stupid and immature thing to say.
I hope your wish for their children to “starve to death” is directed at the Bakers Union and not the route drivers.
What will that one guy in Zombieland do now that they no longer make Ho Ho's?
Great story. My grandfather was still eating bacon and eggs every morning at 96. He quit riding a motorcycle at 93.
What are the political affiliations of Brian Driscoll and Rayburn, the past two CEO’s of Hostess? Are they part of Obama’s plan to raid and destroy businesses and assets? Are they just predatory CEO’s that raid dying corporations? Driscoll is now at Diamond Foods whose stock has plummeted since Mar 2012 and is now worth half of what it was then.
Loocal media is reporting that the closing was a complete surprise to workers and they were sent home mid-shift.
My God...you just brought back one of my very fondest memories of my Dad.He had long been widowed and as he approached 80 he started to decline mentally so he spent the last 8 years of his life in my home.He was a serious junk food junkie...his favorite junk food being Hostess cupcakes.I have pictures of him,after he got into a newly purchased box,his face covered in chocolate with that big grin of his on his face.I'm starting to tear up right now thinking about it.Thanks for the memory!
I understand there is interest in the Hostess brand. Some other companies might be producing Hostess products.
There is hope. :)
After my grandmother’s sudden died, my grandfather was forced to move in with my parents. He was dying from leukemia, but my mother couldn’t bring herself to put him in a nursing home and he was unwilling to have a private nurse live with him. Every few days she had to drive him all over the region in search of those peach pies made by Hostess. The apple and cherry were ubiquitous, but the peach were hard to come by. Whenever she found a supply she would buy the entire stock. For whatever reason those Hostess peach pies were one of the few things in this world he still enjoyed.
I should have been more clear...those union punks who *called* the strike...the baker's union leadership,I guess....and the workers who stayed on strike *to the end*...are the ones I'm talking about,nobody else.
Pssst, jds....limiting carbs and sugar is certainly healthy, but you need good fats. Don't keep them to a minimum.
A Freeper posted that Little Debbie Cloud Cakes are that brand’s version of Twinkies. If you’re a Twinkie fan, maybe you’ll find those a decent replacement.
snipAccording to the Christian Science Monitor, while food producers ConAgra and Flowers Food, the American company behind Nature Valley granola, have expressed interest along with Little Debbie baker McKee Foods, Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo may hold the inside track.
Grupo Bimbo is the world’s largest bread baking firm, which already owns parts of Sara Lee, Entenmann’s and Thomas English Muffins and previously made what was considered a low-ball offer of $580 million a few years ago, Forbes reports. Now Hostess may only be worth $135 million.
Economists say high sugar prices tied to US trade tariffs were a big reason Hostess was struggling, but a Mexican company could be a lifeline for Twinkies because it would be able to take advantage of access to lower-priced sugar in Mexico.
While Hostess was clearly struggling, analysts believed Grupo Bimbo had an eye on them since the early 2000′s because they saw Hostess as a key ingredient for North American expansion with delivery routes that penetrated across the country into convenience stores, gas stations and grocery markets, according to Forbes.
end snip
A free bong in every case of Ding Dongs!
Well, get used to it. More and more of what we have come to expect in our stores is going to be “gone.” As time goes on, this contagion will spread.
I notice that in a LOT of stores, there just isn’t the selection there used to be ...of anything.
I remember visiting East Germany back at the time the wall fell. (hubby was stationed in Germany at the time). There was a store with ONE set of dishes in the window. That was IT. Just one set.
This is communism, folks ...this is what it does. Freedom, choices, competition....there will be none of it. You will bust your butt for very little in return, and will “accept” what “they” give you.
They were turning out junk and I was one of many that said it was junk.
There was nothing unusual in getting a 25% reject rate on oilfield pipe coming from American mills.
Japanese pipe was less than 1% reject rate.
The risk of junk being put downhole and getting a blowout was just getting too high.
Thanks .... I’ll have to check them out! Twinkies were a rare treat, but it was still depressing to think they didn’t exist any more.
Look fairly similar...
I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the Twinkie died
So
[Chorus]
Bye, bye Hostess Apple Pie...
Those are the ones! Thank you.
Off to the HTML sandbox...I really need to be able to post pics.
Right out of engineering school, I took a field service job starting up power plants. On one job in Arizona, I needed to make a very simple adjustment to a coal pulverizer. I picked up a wrench and nearly shut the entire plant down with the unions going nuts. That simple 10 minute job that would have cost $10 if I did the work took SEVEN trades a total of three hours — probably $1,000 or more. Then there were the electricians in Longview, WA who proudly called themselves the “FLEs” — Fat Lazy Electricians. They could featherbed a job at the tail end like nothing I’d ever seen. You couldn’t get them off the job.
Five years in field service gave me a lifetime of education about unions.
We managed to get some chocolate donuts for Sunday School. Everything else was gone.
Tears with you! We were lucky to have them in our lives so long. Sadly for me my mom died at age 44 and my dad at 68. I hope I get my Great Grams “genes”!! Other then the broken hips she was so strong healthwise until the very end.
apparently Little Debbie makes an identical snack cake.
Don’t worry, I read somewhere a while back that Bimbo (a Mexican baking company) were looking to buy out Hostess and produce their line up of products.
Our one and only grocery doesn’t sell Hostess. It’s all Little Debbie which just doesn’t cut it. The convenience stores only carry some off brand which also doesn’t cut it. Back in the day, my fav was Hostess French Pastry which was short lived. It was basically a giant chocolate cream filled cupcake with nuts on top.
About that treadmill, these days I gain just looking at a glass of water. Gone are the days I could wash a pizza down with a hot fudge shake and weighed in at 110.
I had a similar experience fresh out of school when I worked in aerospace. I was always in trouble with the union stewards. I was not allowed to talk to the union machinists without a union steward present.
The factory made big missle parts and some of the machine tools were as big as a house. I would walk onto the fatory floor and the union steward would see me from afar and start heading my way. I would duck behind one of the big tools and then go the other way. For about 20 minutes we would play “cat and mouse”. Most of the machinists thought it was hillarious. I would then leave the factory without talking to anyone. It used to really pi$$ the union steward off because he never knew if I talked to one of the machinists our not.
After 3 years, I had enough of aerospace and moved on.
Dirt is good. You can grow vegetables, beans, and maybe a few berries in it. Won't The First Lady be happy with that?
But dirt will be in short supply as well, and most who don't already have some will not be able to afford it. Then The Progressives will come up with "Dirt subsidies", and start redistributing the dirt, as they've done in so many other countries, dirt reform if you will.
I usually see Ho Hos down on Broad and Main Streets.
Tastykake is 1000% better anyway and they are just starting to go national. Good timing on their part. What’s with the inappropriate Hostess names anyway? Twinkies, Ho Hos and Ding Dongs. You don’t want to know what a twinkie is in the UK (although probably won’t matter much to guys on here).
I've had those..
NOT THE SAME.
Not too bad, but not the same.
When I was growing up there was a childrens song: “Twinkie, Twinkie little star...”
They will not know what to do with dirt.
They ability to think clearly has been deactivated and replaced with something else.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.