Twinkies due on shelves as $410 million bid OK'd

http://money.cnn.com ^ | 03-12-2013 | Staff

[Red Badger]

The winning bid is a joint venture by private equity firms Apollo Global Management (APO) and Metropoulos & Co. A statement from Dean Metropoulos, founder of one of the firms, confirmed they are the winning bidder.

"Our family is thrilled to have the opportunity to reestablish these iconic brands with new creative marketing ideas and renewed sales efforts and investment," said Metropoulos. "We look forward to having America's favorite snacks back on the shelf by this summer. We are also ecstatic to bring jobs back to many cities across the country."

The bankruptcy court had been set to have an auction among qualified bidders on Thursday, but Hostess notified the court late Monday that no other qualified bids had been submitted. That means the $410 million bid wins by default with no further approval of the court being required.

[mdittmar]

I'll believe it when I see it.

[Republican Wildcat]

Privately held McKee Foods Corp. was tapped as the leading bidder with its $27.5 million offer for Hostess' Drake's brand and some of its equipment. Drake's products include Ring Dings, Yodels, Devil Dogs and Yankee Doodles, as well as its coffee cake. That bid is still pending

McKee Foods is Little Debbie...interesting.

[Republican Wildcat]

Flowers Foods...that’s Mrs. Freshley’s I think.

[Dr. Sivana]

“Privately held McKee Foods Corp. was tapped as the leading bidder with its $27.5 million offer for Hostess’ Drake’s brand and some of its equipment. Drake’s products include Ring Dings, Yodels, Devil Dogs and Yankee Doodles, as well as its coffee cake. That bid is still pending”

“McKee Foods is Little Debbie...interesting.”

I think they got the real bargain. First, Drakes was a big player in the NE, and Hostess COPIED the Ring Ding Jr. to make the Ding Dong/Big Wheel/King Don. I believe Yodels predats Ho Hos, and Funny Bones have no Hostess equivalent. IF McKee goes back to the old Drake recipe, which was moister and had darker chocolate, they can have a premium line nationwide and go toe to toe with Hostess on day 1 in the populous NE.

(singing) I love Devil Dogs more than ... Marcia!

[diamond6]

I have a package of Ding Dongs in my pantry, was going to sell them for a million dollars, guess I won’t now. :(

[dfwgator]

[Secret Agent Man]

If they are still going to be a union shop, I am still done with them.

[Slump Tester]

If you see any “Natures Pride”, give it a try. It’s the best whole grain bread out there. I’m pretty sure Arbys used Natures Pride 12 Grain on their Market Fresh deli sandwiches.

[tet68]

However, Bloomberg will want to ban them.........

Are they coming out with an 18 oz. Twinkie?
That would be totally bad.
You’d have to deep fry them one at a time!

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Correct. For reasons I won't go into I'll never buy Mrs Freshley’s again ever.

[KGeorge]

Well, I wish them luck. TastyKakes (owned by Flowers Foods, out of Georgia) puts Hostess *to shame*. If you haven’t tasted their limited edition “Bells”, (their version of a Ding Dong, I guess) don’t. Unless you’re one of those skinny-mini people who can eat whatever you want & not show it. Holee COW!

(Back in January, Flowers Foods was supposed to be the buyer of Hostess)

[diamond6]

Any preservatives or hydrogenated oils?

[S.O.S121.500]

Union thugs lining up for their share of the twinkie?

---

Bust the balls of the unions-—its the AMERICAN way....

[Lancey Howard]

What about “Nature’s Pride” bread?

??

Seriously?
Just buy a loaf of Wonder nread and inject it with sawdust.

[Lancey Howard]

[Slump Tester]

Don’t know about the oils, but it gets stale quicker than other bread.

[diamond6]

I’m a big Milton lover, but would love to try this!

[Republican Wildcat]

It will be interesting to see how this plays out...just cheap snack cakes, but still interesting. Little Debbie really started pushing their Cocoa Creams and Cloud Cakes (equivalent of Ding Dongs and Twinkies) after Hostess went out and probably have already gobbled up a part of that market share and people realize those types of snacks were not irreplaceable or exclusive to Hostess. I’m sure if I ate them side by side I could tell a slight difference, but otherwise I could tell no difference.

[Dr. Sivana]

just cheap snack cakes [ . . . ]Little Debbie really started pushing their Cocoa Creams and Cloud Cakes (equivalent of Ding Dongs and Twinkies) after Hostess went out and probably have already gobbled up a part of that market share and people realize those types of snacks were not irreplaceable or exclusive to Hostess.

JUST cheap snack cakes?!

You probably thought that Walmart cola was a decent replacement for Coke Classic, when that was unavailable for a time.

This is more than a cheap dessert or snack. For some it starts with being a beloved childhood memory. For others the departure of a faithful friend. Some have figured out how to match it with the right ham sandwich. Heck, I invented Hostess Blueberry Fruit Pie a la mode with the help of liberal luncheonette-meister Henry at "Once Upon a Stove" in Cheshire, Connecticut in 1982. The Blueberry Fruit Pie pre-deeceased the rest of the Hostess lineup.

Regarding the Twinkie, Cloud Cakes had been around for a long time. Decades earlier, a then better competitor, Drake's, tried their own version of Creme Fingers, a product so thoroughly ignored after a trial run that it BARELY exists on Google (see Drake's commercial at 6:39).

They aren't bad, but they aren't Twinkies.

Little Debbie's BEST products are their own original creations. In my opinion, the Nutty Bar plays to their strengths, good enough to be mimicked by stores and Mrs. Freshley's. The octagonal dry, and slightly stale Cocoa Cremes could not hold a candle to a Ding Dong/King Don/Big Wheel, and certainly not to a pre-Hostess Ring Ding Jr. The Swiss Rolls are cheap imitations of Yodels and Ho-Hos, and taste as such. The Peanut Butter bars are good, as well. I haven't tried the Devil Dog knock off from Little Debbie, but it probably has a prnounced chemical taste absent on Drake's original.

Nobody has made a plausible knock-off of the Drake's Funny Bone, Hostess SuzieQ, Hostess or Drake's Blueberry Fruit Pies (each good in its own way). Hostess successfully copied Drake's Ring Ding Jr., and Yodels, beating out the brand with name recognition and a decent product, like Nabisco Oreo crushed original sandwich cookie Sunshine Hydrox many decades earlier.

WHile some people have certainly substituted Little Debbie products for classics like the Twinkie, Hostess Cup Cake, Hostess Apple Fruit Pie, Drake's Funny Bone, or (Hostess-owned) Dolly Madison Raspberry Zinger, many more will wait for their return, and WE are the main customers, as moms have started to shun these products in their kids' lunches.

When Twinkies return, I may spread a thin coating of strawberry preserves on them, making a Twinkie strawberry shortcake, paired with an icy glass of whole milk, to celebrate.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Hear, hear, good doctor. Are you a doctor of snackfoodology? If not, you should be.

The most irreplaceable of all is the Funny Bone. Be sure to have a glass of milk handy, or you could die of dehydration.