Twilight for Twinkies? Big Deal. SnoBalls Are the Crushing Loss: West Des Moines Editor’s Notebook

It’s been more or less proven that when common pantry staples like eggs, milk and butter were replaced with properties you’d expect to put in your high school chemistry project, the Twinkie was transformed from a wimpy little cake that would go south in no time at all into the Hercules of treats – a saturated fat-filled bomb so tough that it’ll be around for the cockroaches to feast on.

Twinkie-eating cockroaches as the lone survivors of a nuclear bomb are a metaphor, of course.

But conceivably, the Twinkies currently on the shelves could last another half century or so if Roger Bennatti, the recently retired Blue Hill, Maine, science teacher who kept an unwrapped Twinkie on his chalkboard at George Stevens Academy for three decades, is to be believed.

His Twinkie had been exposed to the elements, but he proclaimed it “still edible,” even though it was dry and brittle. Imagine how long it would last if it was left undisturbed in the equally indestructible cellophane wrapper.

So horde them if their loss is such a big deal to you. They’ll keep. They might even last another millenium.

To me, it’s no tragedy. I won’t miss this diabetic coma-inducing bite of sugared air at all.

I’ve probably consumed fewer than half a dozen of them in my lifetime.

Now, the Hostess SnoBalls are another matter. The crème de la crème of Hostess snacks, the SnoBalls show up orange around Halloween and green on St. Patrick’s Day.

True, Twinkies and the SnoBalls are equally bad in terms of being nutritionally bankrupt. There the comparison ends. The SnoBall is a guilty pleasure and the Twinkie is just junk food.

Twinkies are all sloopy, gooey, sticky sugar with a bad connotation. I can’t imagine at all what would ever make anyone want to use a “Twinkie defense” as justification for murder.

I wouldn’t kill for SnoBalls, but they are by far the more versatile snack. Men’s mid-life crisis birthday cakes will never be the same. Little Debbie is no doubt snickering off to the side as she plans her own dome-shaped snack.

I eat SnoBalls infrequently, and can’t actually recall the last time I had one. But just knowing they were there was comforting. They were the once-a-year treat tucked into the field day sack lunch every spring.

It’s like a piece of my childhood has been stolen.

Oye. I may take to my bed.