Jello/Post--Hostess/Twinkies

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by brian1961

Completely different sets, for sure.

....As for the Hostess, I loved them. As for the individual Twinkies packages, I hated them. Every one I ever saw at the store was stained, often badly. If I couldn't get it in MINT condition at the time it was issued, I simply didn't want it. If it was more scarce than the Hostess, so what. In my mind, if it was stained, it was ruined. Now, if I had had an "in" at the printing facility who did the Hostess cards, that would have been an entirely different matter.....

....My book doesn't cover the Hostess / Twinkies, as they appeared from 1975 - 1979. The era for my book is 1947 - 1971.

Nice topic. Hope you get lotsa responses. ---Brian Powell

Agree with Brain, they are completely different sets. ITT Continental - maker of Hostess products actually developed the 2 sets as a result of rising prices according the Ray Faccenda, General Sales Manager of Hostess in Southern Cal. ITT Continental made the set - spurred on by the success of inserts in Wonder Bread. They actually used some of Topps photos with their collaboration - but did not use the same pictures as in Topps sets - according to Sy Berger, in an article contemporary to those sets in 1975. Sy hinted the set was inferior to Topps products because of the errors and choice of photos. It is these same errors that make the set interesting to collect for modern collectors.

The 1975 Twinkies have the same number on the card back as the Hostess set - but were skip numbered - meaning the Twinkies set actually had fewer cards. The 1975 Hostess set had 150 cards while the same "Twinkies" set has only 60. The 1975 Twinkies set was printed on a 60 card layout - meaning there were no short prints and oddly, unlike its Hostess counterpart, the errors were never corrected in the Twinkies set. The population of early Twinkies cards (ie 1975) is somewhere in the 5-10% of its Hostess counterpart.

At the end of the 1975 production the Cinncinati based printer experimented with different ink giving rise to some interesting variations. Due to the scarcity of Twinkies cards, most will probably never be actively followed.

Z