The Team That Reinvented PBR Wants to Make Twinkies Cool, Too

About four years ago, Hostess Brands—the iconic maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, Snowballs, Zingers, and those chocolate cupcakes with the swirly white frosting on top—filed for bankruptcy. Faced with the prospect of a world without Twinkies, people were paying as much as $10,000 for a box on eBay. It was a dark time, indeed.

But those mega-expensive Twinkies turned out to be a bad investment, as Hostess was bailed out by private buyers who increased automation at its bakeries and let go of 400 workers in a round of cost-cutting. Ultimately, the firm ended up in the hands of the private equity firm Metropoulos & Co., the investment group that successfully turned Pabst Blue Ribbon into every hipster's favorite beer by sponsoring concerts and pumping out sweet merch.

Now Metropoulos & Co. is about to sell a majority stake in Hostess and take the company public. When they do, they'll be hoping to turn Twinkies into the PBR of snacks—still a cream-filled yellow tube cake, but a hip-as-hell one.

Twinkies will be the flagship offering of the new Hostess, which is estimated to be worth $2.3 billion. (Hostess didn't respond to request for comment.) To keep growth going, the investors behind the new Hostess will be launching new versions of Twinkies to mix things up and connect with our youth, Bloomberg reports. With some clever marketing, the next thing you see might be the cool kids with ripped jeans and skateboards double-fisting Twinkies and tall cans.

Twinkies aren't the easiest sell in a market full of health-conscious consumers, but as Bloomberg writes, "Hostess is counting on Twinkies' strong brand sparking a youth rebellion to the healthy food movement." If you can stick it to the man by downing Twinkies, sign me up.

There's no word on what the new flavors will be, but there have been some changes to the original Twinkie recipe. Contrary to popular belief, Twinkies don't last forever—in a form you'd want to eat, anyway—and the new Twinkie recipe has doubled the product's shelf life to 65 days in order to cut down on trucking costs. If you did pay $10,000 for a box of Twinkies a couple of years ago, this is probably unwelcome news, though you most likely have other regrets about that purchase.

It may be only a matter of time until we start seeing Twinkie trucker hats and Twinkie reps handing out free snack cakes at summer music festivals. But one question remains: do Twinkies pair well with PBR?