Today marks a sweet anniversary. On April 6, 1930 — 96 years ago today — one of America’s most iconic snack foods was born, not from a grand corporate vision, but from a plant manager’s practical problem-solving and a billboard he happened to drive past.
Jimmy Dewar, a Canadian-born baker working for the Continental Baking Company in Schiller Park, Illinois, had worked his way up from delivering pastries by horse-drawn cart to managing a bakery plant. In 1930, his facility was producing strawberry shortcakes — but only during strawberry season, leaving expensive machines sitting idle for months at a time. Dewar’s solution was simple: create a snack cake that could be made year-round. He settled on a sponge cake filled with banana cream, and when he spotted a billboard for a shoe company called the “Twinkle Toe Shoe Co.,” he had his name. The Twinkie was born.
Early production was far from the automated assembly lines we might imagine today. Workers filled each cake by hand using a foot-pedaled contraption — a charmingly low-tech origin for what would become one of the most mass-produced snacks in history.
A War Changes Everything
World War II left its mark on the Twinkie in an unexpected way. With bananas rationed, Hostess was forced to swap the original banana cream filling for vanilla. The change was supposed to be temporary, but customers loved it. Vanilla stuck around, and banana largely faded into the background.
The original flavor did make a notable comeback in 2005, during a month-long promotion tied to the release of King Kong. Twinkie sales jumped 20% during the campaign, and by 2007, Hostess had quietly restored the banana-cream Twinkie to its regular lineup — though today’s version is made with just 2% banana purée, a far cry from the real thing.
Bankruptcy, Revival, and 1,100 Twinkies a Minute
Not even an iconic snack is immune to economic reality. In January 2012, parent company Hostess filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, reporting Twinkie sales of 36 million packages for the prior year — nearly 20% lower than the year before. Hostess attributed the decline to consumers shifting toward healthier foods.
By November 2012, Hostess announced it would shut down entirely. Time magazine, in its farewell of sorts, ranked the Twinkie #1 on its list of 10 iconic junk foods, noting that they had become “a staple in our popular culture and, above all, in our hearts.” It felt like the end of an era.
But Twinkies don’t go down easy. The brand was purchased out of bankruptcy and returned to store shelves in July 2013. Today, approximately 1,100 Twinkies roll off the line every single minute at the Hostess Bakery in Emporia, Kansas.
The Shelf Life Myth
Few food legends are as persistent as the idea that Twinkies last forever. The urban myth holds that their chemical composition gives them a shelf life of ten, fifty, or even one hundred years. The truth is considerably more humble.
According to a Hostess executive who spoke with The New York Times in 2000, a Twinkie is typically on store shelves for no more than 7 to 10 days. The maximum shelf life was once reported at 26 days, and a reformulation in 2012 extended that to 45 days through stronger preservatives. As a real-world test, a box of Twinkies from just before the 2012 bankruptcy was opened eight years later: one had completely molded over, another had developed some mold, and the cream filling of a third had turned brown and reportedly tasted like an old sock. Eternal, they are not.
The Men Who Loved Twinkies
Jimmy Dewar, the snack’s inventor, was rumored to have eaten at least three Twinkies and a glass of milk every night before bed — though that was never officially confirmed or denied.
What is confirmed is the remarkable dedication of Lewis Browning of Shelbyville, Indiana. The retired milk truck driver ate at least one Twinkie every day beginning in 1941, a streak he maintained until his death in 2007 at the age of 90. By the end, he had consumed more than 22,000 Twinkies. His devotion earned him an interview with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show and, fittingly, a lifetime supply of the snacks from Hostess.
Some legacies are built on great deeds. Others are built on sponge cake and cream filling. Lewis Browning’s, at least, was delicious.