The Man Who Concocted The Twinkies

“The inventor of the Twinkie was said to have eaten two packages of Twinkies a week” says Jerry Belcher, author of the “Man Who Concocted the Twinkie Dies” . When Twinkies were first created in 1930, they rose to be America’s favorite little snack cake. Soon, many became addicted to this tasty treat. It wasn’t just the consumers that loved to get their hands on them, but also their inventor, James A. Dewar.

James A. Dewar, aka inventor of the Twinkie, started from a humble beginning. He began his career in the 1920s, according to Jerry Belcher, the author of the “Man Who Concocted the Twinkie Dies”: Dewar began “peddling pound cakes from a horse-drawn wagon for Continental Baking Company”. As the 1920s droned on, America’s economy was crushed by the Great Depression. During this time more than fifteen million American were unemployed(History, para 1). Ironically, Dewar only moved up in the career chain. By the 1930s, Dewar was no longer the “humble

Dewar's invention, “Twinkies”, were small finger shaped sponge cake with a white synthetic cream filling. You may ask “How did Dewar come up with Twinkies?”. Let us start at the beginning. The Hostess company were already selling strawberry shortcake snack cakes. Unfortunately the machines that produced them were inactive when the strawberry season was over(Belcher, para 8). So Dewar came up with the idea to use the machines to make finger caked filled with banana cream(The History of The Twinkie, para 1). Dewar later named these cakes “Twinkies”, after getting inspiration from a “Twinkle Toes Shoes” billboard he saw on a sales trip(Belcher, para 9). Unfortunately, the Twinkies brand took a hit in the 1940s. During World War 2 bananas were being rationed throughout America. Thus the Hostess Company switched the banana cream to a vanilla filling. After this switch the Twinkie brand rose to popular, the snack cake became the Hostess company's most popular treat(The History of the Twinkie, para 1,2,3, and