Twinkies Were Born April 6, 1930, Filled With Banana Cream Until WWII Rationing

The Twinkie turns up on lists of the most recognizable American snack cakes, and its story is full of detours. According to Wikipedia, a Continental Baking Company baker named James Dewar invented it on April 6, 1930, filling it with banana cream.

That banana filling did not last. During the Second World War, the company switched to vanilla cream, and vanilla has been the standard ever since, apart from a few short-lived banana revivals.

The 1930 invention

The Wikipedia entry on Hostess Twinkies says Dewar, a Canadian-born baker, created the cake for Continental Baking in Schiller Park, Illinois. He came up with the idea when strawberry shortcake machines sat idle out of season.

Other accounts place Dewar at a different plant. Mental Floss describes him as the manager of Continental Baking’s River Forest, Illinois, plant, and says he wanted “a two-to-a-pack item for a nickel.” That article does not give a specific day, so April 6 rests on the Wikipedia entry.

The strawberry season is short, which left the shortcake pans unused for about six weeks a year, according to Mental Floss. Banana cream was the filling that put those pans to work in the off-season. Workers filled each cake by hand with a foot-pedaled machine.

How the name came about

Wikipedia says Dewar got the name from a St. Louis billboard advertising Twinkle Toe Shoes. Mental Floss agrees that he borrowed from the shoe brand and shortened it to make the name “a little zippier for the kids.”

The company behind the cake has a long history of its own. According to Wikipedia’s Continental Baking entry, the firm began as a small bakery on Broome Street in New York City in 1849. It was known as Ward Baking Company until it was renamed Continental Baking in 1925, and it made Wonder Bread along with Twinkies. Ownership changed hands several times afterward. ITT bought the company in 1968, Ralston Purina acquired it in 1984, and Interstate Bakeries bought it in 1995 before the combined company was rebranded Hostess Brands in 2009.

Older kitchens had their own habits. A list of kitchen staples grandmothers kept within arm’s reach and a look at girl names grandmothers remember from the 1930s reach back to the decade the Twinkie was born.

The snack belongs to a generation of packaged treats that kids of the 1970s and 1980s grew up on. A look at things only people who grew up in the 70s will understand and a list of things that made the 80s the greatest decade bring back that era. Another piece on things that decorated every 70s home covers the kitchens and living rooms where those snacks were eaten.

The wartime switch to vanilla

Banana cream stayed in the cake until the Second World War. Wikipedia says wartime banana rationing led the company to switch to vanilla cream, which proved popular.

The cause is described differently elsewhere. HistoryNet says wartime bombing made shipping bananas and oranges across oceans dangerous, so Dewar changed the recipe to vanilla, which was easier to get. The article does not mention formal rationing of bananas.

The National WWII Museum’s overview of wartime rationing lists sugar as the first food rationed, in May 1942. Coffee followed in November 1942, and meats, fats, canned fish, cheese and canned milk were added in March 1943. Bananas do not appear in that overview, so the exact reason for the change depends on which account is used. The museum adds that rationing ended with the war in 1945, though sugar stayed rationed until June 1947.

All the accounts agree that vanilla replaced banana. HistoryNet says bananas became widely available again after the war, but the vanilla filling stayed.

Banana returns, briefly

Banana versions did come back from time to time. Mental Floss says they reappeared periodically in later decades, and HistoryNet notes that Hostess briefly reintroduced a banana Twinkie in 2007, though it had a short run.

Bankruptcy and return

The brand’s most dramatic stretch came in 2012. Wikipedia says Hostess filed for Chapter 11 protection on January 11, 2012, and production was suspended on November 15, 2012.

Twinkies returned to American shelves on July 15, 2013. Wikipedia says Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co. bought Hostess out of bankruptcy for $410 million. According to the Continental Baking entry, a separate entity formed in 2013 acquired the brand names and some assets and took the Hostess Brands name.

Mental Floss puts the pause at between November 2012 and July 2013. It adds that the shelf life, which was 26 days before the shutdown, is now about 45 days after the recipe was reformulated.

The cake by the numbers

Wikipedia lists the current Twinkie at 135 kilocalories and 38.5 grams, down from 150 kilocalories and 42.5 grams for the original. As of December 25, 2011, annual sales stood at 36 million packages, down almost 20 percent from the year before.

The cake has also picked up some trivia over the years. Mental Floss says the Twinkie the Kid mascot debuted in early 1970s television ads and was retired in 1988. It returned in 1990 after a 13-year-old, Judd Slivka, led a petition with 135 signatures. A Twinkie was also nearly included in a 1999 time capsule due to be opened in 2100, but staff pulled it over concerns about mice.

The same article says Lewis Browning ate at least one Twinkie a day from 1941 until his death in 2007 at age 90, reportedly more than 22,000 in all.

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Evan-Amos – CC0/Wikimedia Commons