If Junk Food had a Poster Snack, it might have been the Twinkie. Tastes great, big sugar buzz, 100 calories of corn and chemicals, gobbled up by children of all ages, for generations. A barely nutritive staple of egalitarian American cusine. Twinkie's been the Velveeta of dessert. No one is really sure what it's made out of, but its a lot like cake.

Days after Hostess announced it was going bankrupt, a black market has sprung up for Twinkies and Ding Dongs. Industrious snack food aficionados apparently saw the big baker’s empire crumbling and bought boxes of the junk food---and are now featuring them at exorbitant prices on internet commerce sites like E Bay and Craig’s List. I can’t remember the last time I had a TWINKIE…maybe high school-and I have never been a hugh snack cake fan…so outside of feeling sad for hundreds of hostess workers who’ll be without a job for the holidays and much longer…I haven’t really been dwelling on this mini blip to the U-S economy…until I read deeper and learned that Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Wonder Bread aren’t the only bakery aisle casualties. Anyone who grew up on the East Coast, or settled there will remember the name Drakes Cakes. I figure my mom, sending her four kids off to a combined 48 years of schooling before college, probably whipped up close to ten thousand lunches bag lunches. Bolstering the bologna, teaming with the tuna Fish, and insuring that there is life after the liverwurst, there always seemed to be a Drakes cake. Ring Dings and Yodels were my favorites…devils food cake, some kind of creamy stuff in the middle, all covered with chocolate frosting. I was never much for Devil Dogs…no frosting and the cake was so dry, the room temperature parochial school milk was as welcome as a cabernet with a rib eye. Then there were Drakes cinnamon coffee cakes, which could perk up even rancid, bitter gas station coffee. The fruit pies were ok…not as good as home made…but then what was?

I’m saddened about Drakes, which like Hostess has the same ownership; saddened the way much of the west is mourning the demise of Hostess. Those Drakes cakes were always there-in every supermarket and 7- 11 and little bodega…From the clogged streets of New York City to the quieter streets of suburbia…seeing a panel truck or sometimes an 18 wheeler delivering the ring dings and devil dogs and Yankee doodles was a welcome site.

The story is that Twinkies came onto the scene about 1930---named after a popular brand of women’s shoes, the "Twinkie Toe" brand.…the original filling was banana crème….but it evolved into that sugary white filling we’ve come to know during WW Two when bananas were in short supply.

San Francisco’s Supervisor turned killer Dan White cited a nasty Twinkie habit, as part of his "junk food" defense. Though some have surmised the Twinkie could survive nuclear winter…experts say, they start to lose that fresh taste in about 4 weeks. So if you plan to buy from the eBay or craigslist merchants….you could see a price drop in about 3 weeks...

There are about a hundred calories in a Twinkie, but if you tried to make them yourself, you’d find more necessary ingredients in a chemistry lab than grandma's pantry. …Lots of chemicals. lots of corn too….so the demise of the cream filled sponge snack could hurt some of those corn farmers in the Midwest…True fans of America’s snack cakes may have a tough time with Twinkie withdrawal and the Ding Dong DT’s…but with a box of the endangered proletariat pastries setting you back a hundred bucks or more on the internet black market,..There’s bound to be a baker with more dough already working on a plan to buy the bankrupt bakery or at least its best known products. The name being bandied about is the Bimbo Baking Company out of Mexico…so some day soon, you won’t be a Ding Dong if you still looking for Hostess cakes, just understand… it will probably take a Bimbo to make them.