Twinkie Turns 80

By: Katherine Montalto | May 13 2010
Posted in Find It - Chicago

Twinkie, the great American cream-filled golden tube cake, turns eighty this month. It all started in 1930 just outside Chicago in Schiller Park, Illinois. It was the beginning of the depression and plant manager James A. Dewar was worried the company might not survive the harsh economic times with its current expensive baking practices. The biggest offender was equipment dedicated to baking the strawberry-filled “Little Short Cake Fingers,” used only once a year for six weeks during the strawberry season. The equipment collected dust the rest of the year.

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Dewar whipped up a batch of banana cream (bananas produce fruit year round and thus are never out of season) and filled the golden finger cakes using three syringe-like injection tubes. He named the new snack "Twinkies," inspired by a billboard he saw in St. Louis that read "Twinkle Toes Shoes Factory." Twinkies have been made with vanilla cream since WWII.

Over the past 80 years, the Twinkie has been a mainstay in the hearts and minds of America. Twinkies have been showing up in our lunch pails and in our pop culture, most recently in the movie Zombieland where Woody Harrelson's character Tallahassee desperately searches the hollow remains of humanity for the last surviving Twinkies. Contrary to popular belief, Twinkies do have a shelf life. They only last about 25 days, not years, decades, or centuries.

One of my favorite Twinkie memories is from late nights drinking in the many bars of Wicker Park, Chicago. My favorite late night snack treat was a deep-fried Twinkie from Swank Frank, which was still open after the bars closed at 4am to take advantage of the drunken indulgences of its patrons. Sadly, Swank Frank has been shut down to make room for yet another bank. You can still get your deep-fried fix at Hamburger Mary's in Andersonville where one order is not one but three deep-fried Twinkies!

What's your favorite Twinkie memory? Would Twinkies be the treat you'd crave most should the world fall prey to a zombie plague or do you have another favorite junk food that you would seek out?