As a former Bakery manager for many companies, including Hostess, their demise started in the early 90,s when they could not match the pricing in the market by Little Debbie and the Private Label influence perpetuated by Flowers Baking Company, both Southern based bakers.. I spent the last years of my term in Chicago, IL with a privately held company and we competed against Wonder-Hostess. Our pay was commensurate with them as we were in the same union environment

. Route sales reps averaged over 50K per year due to a base pay of over 400 weekly and a 7 percent commission on sales. We contributed their health care to the unions who covered them .It was very expensive, like 200 per week per employee. That coupled with the vacation policy of up to 5 weeks brouht our average cost of wages and benefits to nearly 75K per year. That said bakery plant workers wages varied from 15 per hour to 25 per hour plus benefits which pushed our per employee average to over 65K per year. We had 280 route sales reps and nearly 300 inside workers, yet we made profits because our quality was first rate and our service was first rate. Yes, sales reps worked 10 hours per day or more but the harder they worked and sold the more money they made. The killer for Hostess came when they overexpanded, lowered their quality, added preservatives to extend the freshness code to 12 days from 5. Won't work in this world.

Would love to see Hostess put out a line of "throwback" or "classic" products (like Pepsi did with Pepsi and Mountain Dew), using the original recipes for their snack cakes.  I know they wouldn't be able to include trans-fats (a rant for another time, perhaps), but the snacks had changed significantly for the worse before the trans-fats law.

I would pay extra for a real Ding-Dong, Twinkie or (my favorite) Ho-Ho!

By the way, I am very healthy "for my age group" (my doctor's caveat) and pay a lot of attention to nutrition.  My healthy diet has room for the occasional non-nutritious treat!

My husband can not retire as he is not even 50 yrs. old yet in age.  And the comment regarding take home pay, I should have said his gross pay. 

Overinflated,undertalented, underworked unions - someone who has worked for a company for over even 10 years can not be undertalented or they would not be working there anymore - underworked - working over 10-12 hrs. a day for 5 days a week is underworked??  All the talk about who cares if they close as the products are not good for us to eat...  If we closed all the companies that made products that were not good for us, where would the majority of employees in USA be - unemployed?