Hostess Brands, the company that makes Twinkies among many other light yet calorific snack foods, is being sold to jelly conglomerate J.M. Smucker for $5.6bn. That would buy about 15 billion Twinkies at their current street value.
Smucker had to fight to snag Hostess, prevailing over several big rivals that reportedly included PepsiCo, Oreo maker Mondelez International and Cheerios maker General Mills.
Hostess — which introduced Twinkies in 1930 — first went bankrupt in 2004 ("blaming the nation's infatuation with low-carb diets," said The Chicago Tribune). The company re-emerged a few years later under private-equity ownership, but filed for Chapter 11 again in 2012 (blaming its union contracts, which The Atlantic investigated).
Smucker's CEO praised Hostess's "leading innovation pipeline," but IMO it would have been better to simply not mention where the snacks end up.
