Twinkies
It's from 1930, before you were born.
- Maker
- Hostess Brands
- Type
- Cream-filled snack cake
- Debuted
- 1930
- Note
- the "golden sponge cake"
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About
As of 2026, it's 96 years old.
The Twinkie is a golden sponge cake filled with cream and, allegedly, immortality. Invented in 1930 from idle shortcake pans, it spent decades starring in jokes about its supposedly indestructible shelf life — the snack most likely, per legend, to survive the apocalypse alongside cockroaches.
When Hostess briefly went under in 2012 and Twinkies vanished, it made national news and sparked genuine grief, proving Americans have real feelings about a cream-filled tube.
Soft, sweet, and faintly eternal, the Twinkie is junk food that has somehow ascended to folklore.
Twinkies through the years
Invented in Illinois
A baker repurposes idle shortcake pans to make a cream-filled cake.
Hostess bankruptcy
Twinkies briefly vanish from shelves amid national headlines.
Twinkies return
New owners bring the snack cake back.
