Kansas City has spoken. Chocolate Peanut Butter Twinkies are here to stay.
“Mmmm...that’s good,” taste-tester Shaye Comes said after taking a bite of the chocolate cake with peanut butter filling.
“Wow, that’s really, really good,” fellow taste-tester and friend MJ McCollum responded.
The Star hunted down a package of the rare Hostess treat just weeks after they were placed on the shelves of local grocery and convenience stores. We walked around the Country Club Plaza to see what people really thought about this new Twinkie flavor and Kansas City is eating it up.
With its headquarters in Kansas City, Hostess Brands LLC launched the new flavor combination in early July. The Chocolate Peanut Butter Twinkie is the latest twist on the original snack cake after producing a chocolate Twinkie earlier this year.
“When we looked at research that we had conducted on new flavor pairings and several different product lines, one of the concepts that always garnered the most enthusiasm and excitement from consumers was chocolate and peanut butter,” chief marketing officer Burke Raine said.
“That’s not super surprising if you look at some of the biggest brands in the country with chocolate and peanut butter as their flavor pairing. You’ve got the salty and the sweet, and that comes together as a great combo.”
The new Twinkie is being sold in single-serve twin packs for a suggested price of $1.89 and multi-packs for a suggested cost of $3.99.
This flavor is a product of the company’s “Summer Twinkie Celebration,” which is a summer promotion with the iconic Twinkie brand that Hostess uses as a way to celebrate the comeback of their company. Hostess had filed its second bankruptcy petition and was brought back to life when its bread lines and its snack operations were acquired. The snack side of the business was bought by a team of private investors headed by Dean Metropoulos and Apollo Global Management. The public now can buy shares in the company.
“Every summer ever since Hostess came back in the summer of 2013, we’ve always used summer time as an opportunity to have some fun with the Twinkie brand,” Raine said.
This summer, the longtime beloved golden sponge cake has gone to the dark side...with a peanut butter crème filling.
“I love it,” taste-tester Juan Santos said. “Can I have more?”
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