Will it be twilight for Twinkies in our time?

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To prove the hold that these little cakes have on the American imagination, there was a well-documented experiment conducted in 1995 at Rice University known as the Test with Inorganic Noxious Kakes in Extreme Circumstances. In pursuit of higher knowledge — and coincidentally, during finals week — a group of frat boys conducted several experiments on Twinkies and posted their results on a website.

The tests included: exposure to radiation (Twinkies will explode after 10 minutes in a microwave and cover the oven with a smelly, brown goo); resistivity (two people pulling at either end of a Twinkie will get a handful of cream in two seconds); and gravitational pull (yep, they dropped the Twinkies off a five-story dormitory). Their parents must be so proud.

As we go to press, there is a twinkle of a possibility that another company may step in to buy the Twinkie brand, even as Hostess heads to bankruptcy court.

There is other good news as well. Even if Hostess goes out of business and no one wants to keep Twinkies alive, there is an active black market in existing supplies. And because most of the ingredients are artificial, Twinkies have an astoundingly long shelf life. Some say they are like cockroaches, and can survive anything, including a nuclear attack. We can only hope.

Copyright © 2012 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.

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