Well said....

Yesterday I checked in an received what I am sure will be my last Wonder Bread delivery where I work. My delivery driver decided to finish his route and do his job until the end.

It was a sad moment.

the pink ones, and couldn't finish it. Always loved them.

The "icing" was always an odd concoction of sugar, glue, and snot with some food coloring, and it was fun to peel it off the cake and squoosh it up before chomping it down. The cake was standard hostess cake.

But, in the past they had some sort of flavor-- a little cherry or strawberry in the gummy icing and chocolate in the cake. This time nothing. Not chocolaty at all. And not even the hint of artificial fruit flavor in the helmet.

Blecch! Sorry all those people are out of work, but we're really better off without that stuff.

Maybe it's a regional thing but when I want cheap sugar and lard I go for the wee girl with the rosy cheeks and the straw hat.

which is also a regional brand that is far superior to anything produced by Hostess.

Tastykake where I live now, must just be a mid-Atlantic thing. I miss 'em.

Which is now owned by... Hostess. Hostess bought Drakes and Dolly Madison.. I used to love Butterscotch Krimpets but you can't get them in the midwest...

I'm pretty sure I'm right about them being Drakes...

they were heaven. I liked the cherry but would get stuck with one that had seeds in it. Really feeling nostalgic.

just check the ingredient labels from now vs then.
The ones in the past look like a recipe
todays look like a chemistry experiment.

Think about it. Chef Boy-Ardee macaroni and meatballs taste like something from Paris to an eight year old. Hambuger Helper? It was awestome! Kraft Mac and Cheese? Who was the genius that created this? Spam? LIme Koolaid? Yummy. Totino's Pizza ? It was a slice of heaven. But would you eat a plate of that crap now? The ingredients may have changed but its' more likely that your taste buds matured and those pies are just waiting for the next eight year old to come strolling by.

even kraft mac and cheese has changed - the flavor is still the same but the macaroni is tiny and fake tasting compared to the original.
The quality of processed food has seriously degraded in the past 20 years. I'm 45 now, and even the things I fed my kids 15 years ago are not nearly the same products now.
Remember how Chunky soup used to be chunky and have pieces of real beef? now it's a can of mush

I'm 51 and food today tastes and looks quite different from when it did when I was in my teens and twenties.

"Better living through chemistry", my ass.

and, increasingly, for what they can extract from us by charging us for every aspect of our lives.

In the ongoing Social Security/Medicare fight, we see that they are now resisting paying to maintain us past the time when we are profitable to them...just as farmers slaughter hens when they no longer produce eggs...

They are also building their monopoly of our food supply and are gradually transitioning us to cheap, low-grade food.....Purina "People Chow."

This is what happens when corporations grow in power and size to the point that the people on top no longer must interact with those on the bottom. Corporate ethics replace human ethics, and profit is permitted to become the primary goal of those with power in a society. Human beings cease to be recognized as human beings, and are judged merely as sources or wasters of profit, to be managed accordingly - added or crossed out - on a balance sheet.

And this is a ridiculous argument, given that the evidence of degradation of quality is available eveywhere.

I liked the pink snowballs with coconut also back in the day. Like you (nt) I recently got a package & the cake was dried out and the marshmallow gunk was more gunky & lacked flavor. My husband on the other hand, said "we need to go to the grocery store & buy a few boxes of Ding Dongs." (go figure, he has loved them like forever but we try to stay away from junk food)

I do know that this piling on debt, giving out exec bonuses & selling the company off to the highest bidder is what that disaster of a person Mitt Rmoney advocated. Gov. PondScum pioneered these & other tactics & have changed the culture of business. Restructuring through bankruptcy used to not be a death sentience. This once great American company was 80 years old. So sad for their employees & their families. We heard the recording of Rmoney advocating "harvesting" companies. That's why it's called vulture capitalism. The fact that our workers are the best in the world doesn't matter to rich fucks like him and his ilk..

It is always so sad to see so many lose their jobs. I believe there were 18,000+ or let go right before the holidays. The union is NOT the problem, GREED is.

I grew up in NJ. I loved Tastykake products especially their. Fruit. Pies.

http://www.examiner.com/article/girl-scout-cookie-ingredients-then-versus-now

For an idea of how much things have changed over the years, here is a list of ingredients from the first Girl Scout cookies of the 1920's and 1930's:

Flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, real vanilla, salt, baking powder (generally this was sodium bicarbonate and corn starch)

Here is a list of ingredients from modern shortbread cookies (the cookies that have the least amounts of chemicals, food coloring and other unnatural ingredients of modern Girl Scout cookies):

Enriched flour, sugar, palm oil, whey, corn syrup, sodium bicarbonate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, natural and artificial flavor, corn starch, salt, soy lecithin

Note the complete lack of ingredients like milk, eggs and butter in the modern recipe.

They don't use actual butter for some reason, and use palm oil, but the sweeteners are sugar and condensed milk. The only ingredient that REALLY bothers me (for a few reasons) is the palm oil. Some of the "unnatural ingredients" you mention are anything but -- they are vitamins. Soy lecithin is merely a non-animal-based emulsifier.

This is the Trefoils standard ingredient list for all GSA bakeries:

Enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate [vitamin B1], riboflavin [vitamin B2], folic acid), soybean and palm oil, sugar, contains two percent or less of brown sugar (sugar, molasses), sweetened condensed milk (condensed milk, sugar), dried buttermilk, salt, natural and artificial flavor, baking soda, soy lecithin.

http://somd.com/news/headlines/2012/15519.shtml Haven't touched a girl scout cookie since the change. Ugh.....

His dinner bucket would have his Hostess Apple pie in it, for my sister and I.

We would take that pie and unwrap it. take a butter knife and measure it out...(my job, I was the oldest) and cut it equally, she would pick the half she wanted (mom's rule) It was a special treat, wonderful memory.

I am sketching scenes from my childhood. The above is among them. My sister hanging on my arm, making sure I am fairly dividing the pie. Me taking my duties seriously as I slice. I even had to look up on the internet, to see exactly how a hostess pie wrapper looked in the 1960s...I wanted that picture perfect.

Like you, I have found their pies today to be bland, I had thought it was old taste buds..I also purchased a box of twinkies couple few weeks back...EVEN they were not the same, again I thought it was me.

We'd buy them from vending machines in order to quench our constant hunger.

I used to eat them all the time when I was in college, and I really liked them.

Had one a few years ago, and it tasted different somehow, and not in a good way. I think that in addition to changes in food processing methods, we have better alternatives now. For example, there are now stores that specialize in freshly baked cupcakes.

but I did like Ding Dongs and their lemon pies (I forgot about the pies). I almost feel the need to go purchase one of each for nostalgia purposes. Then again, they're probably not even vegetarian. I'd guess they contain gelatin.

Oh well, my memory of how they taste is probably better than reality anyway...

They tasted like actual pie. I bought some for my kids a few years ago on a whim, and they didn't care for them (and my kids love junk food as much as any kid ever did). I didn't try it, but noticed that they looked...different.

I remember them being quite delish! I loved apple & cherry.

When I was a kid in the sixties, my mother wouldn't let us eat any of that stuff. My memories of apple pie are picking the apples and using the corer that clamped on the counter, then my mother would make the pies. My memories of pizza are picking big fat tomatoes and basil and punching down the dough.

Heat up one of their apple pies in the microwave for a few seconds. Yum!