Guilty Fun
Written By: ARTY NELSON / Photography by: LULU SYRACUSE
If you do your AI Googling right, you will find no less than 21 flavors of Twinkies. But the real truth is that there are just a handful of standard flavors and a couple seasonal jimmy jams thrown in to elevate the quiver.
When you have suitably prepared yourself to eat a Twinkie, when you’ve entered that sacred space by THC-infused means or otherwise, and you feel fully up to doing the thing that can only be described as Jetson-adjacent, what you will encounter is a journey that not only begins but maybe even ends with that first bite. That sugar-infused chemical Armageddon that effortlessly pulverizes the senses.
For me, the real work is deciding how best to paddle out on said voyage. Of course, I would include the classic Twinkie, followed right behind with the Chocolate Cake Lovers iteration which I have enjoyed repeatedly over the years. And lastly, the much-ballyhooed Red, White & BLUE, a seasonal tribute to our country’s July 4th rituals.
And with that, so begins our culinary threesome: a battle royale wherein the only real winner will be me, the eater.
It seems the only way to really do this is to cut a bunch of Twinkies in half—no ends—just all good middle cream chunks. Probably more than anything, I’m compelled to see what the difference is between the classic white cream and the R, W, & B cream. In a nutshell, it is both subtle and profound. If the classic white cream (originally intended as a puff of banana flavor) is a little gooey shot of chemical, the new blue cream is like the classic on steroids, with maybe a touch of cough syrup for good measure! Even more artificial, which in very few contexts could possibly be meant as a good thing. And then, just when I think this whole thing can’t get any more surreal, we lob the Chocolate Cake Lovers bite into the stew; a more muted ride with gently radioactive cocoa cream to enhance.
To power down a whole Twinkie in a single bite is to feel the full-throttle thrust of being young and reckless and perfectly comfortable posted up on a curb outside your all-time favorite 7-Eleven. In short, a simple act that triggers a moment back when we were satisfied with one of life’s simplest pleasures; a premise which becomes harder and trickier in an almost fleeting moment-to-moment way, as one’s life bumbles along toward a slow death brought on by streaming-service mega-packages and credit card debt.
To power down a whole Twinkie in a single bite is to feel the full-throttle thrust of being young and reckless...
The classic Twinkie remains the Gold Standard. In the end, the blue cream can’t really compete. As for the Chocolate Cake Lovers Twinkie, well that’s another story. And I suspect that’s why the flavor was added to the permanent roster. The baked world’s answer to Leather and Lace. Or more on the nose, Ebony and Ivory. Whichever analogy best suits your mental palate, I can assure you that everything you ever remembered about eating a Twinkie, both amazing and ridiculous, is fully intact within the modern-day miracle that is the new Twinkie Game.
DID YOU KNOW?
Twinkies were invented in 1930 by baker Jimmy Alexander Dewar for the Continental Baking Company in Illinois. Dewar came up with the name when he saw an ad on a billboard in St. Louis for “Twinkle Toe Shoes.” Dewar noticed equipment in the factory that used to make the company’s small, baked strawberry shortcakes sitting idle and he had an idea: injecting the yellow cakes with a banana cream filling, and, voilà, the Twinkie was born.
