I used to looooooooooove Twinkies.

Just so y'all know, though...it isn't any "low-carb explosion" that caused the Twinkie Men to close up shop. It's just the economy, period. K-mart wasn't able to use the Twinkie excuse. Nor any of the other major corporations that are teetering on the edge of Chapter 11 at the moment.

When companies give their guidances (future predictions), they ALWAYS say "Oh, we're gonna make soooooo much money this quarter/period/year!" because they're afraid their stockholders (the common man!) will come at them with pitchforks and torches if they don't tell them something they want to hear. But then when that quarter or year is up and the company didn't make money, they have to come up with some lame excuse. I work in the cosmetics and personal care industry (the publishing end) and the excuse is traditionally "The strength of the U.S. dollar vs. the softness of the (insert_foreign_currency_here) negatively impacted our previous predictions..." I'm not kidding, I may as well just copy & paste that one statement onto EVERY financial we release here. But Twinkies didn't have that excuse, since NOBODY digs into a case of Twinkies like an American, soooo....they had to blame low-carb. For the record, of all the people I know, at work, at home, online, wherever, the percentage of low-carbers vs. carb fanatics has gotta be 5 or less. Much less, probably. Seriously, look around you at all the people you see battling their weight...can you honestly say Twinkies aren't continuing to have a place in the heart of Joe or Jill Consumer?

Just wanted to put in my (overly strong vs. the foreign_currency) $.02!