Twinkies have long been considered the perfect food for an apocalypse. "They have no ingredients that a human can pronounce, so they don't leave you with that heavy 'food' feeling in your stomach," quipped Xander in an early episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. An early "what-if" episode of Family Guy saw the world come to an end after Y2K and the Griffin family on a search to find the Twinkie factory so they would have a lifetime supply of food. And of course, Tallahassee makes his search for Twinkies the driving force behind his survival:
Well, kiss your back-up apocalypse plans goodbye. The Twinkie is no more.
Hostess, the company that makes Twinkies, Ho-Hos, Snowballs, Wonder Bread, and other nutritionally-deficient foods, announced today that it is filing for bankruptcy protection and closing its operations nationwide, effective immediately. Hostess has had financial difficulties in the last decade, filing for bankruptcy twice since 2004, including this past January. Hostess blames a nationwide strike of its bakers (yes, apparently real people bake those treats) after contract negotiations stalled. Clearly, though, Hostess has been in trouble for a long time.
If the company gets the court's approval for the filing, the assets will be auctioned off, so Twinkies could live again if another company buys the brand. There is no estimation for when that might happen, so for now, you may want to buy up all the Twinkies you can find to fill your emergency kits.
(Fun fact: Twinkies, while they do have an inordinately long shelf life for baked goods, they will not "last forever." The Twinkie company suggests they will last 7-10 days, but we all know that is a lowball estimate. Twinkies in their package can easily last a month or more.)