#Ratings: Hostess Mascot Characters

Twinkie the Kid

Looking at this cream-filled cowboy today, he appears a cross between the Time for Timer cartoon character or an anthropomorphized corn dog - albeit dressed in western gear. Or a yellow pickle? My mother was talented enough to make homemade Twinkies when I was a kid, so when I think of Twinkies I think of this large cream-filled sheet cake, not this little buckaroo. He has staying power after nearly 50 years, but I've never understood the correlation between sponge cake and the American Old West. (B+)

King Ding Dong

I always thought Hostess had something good going with the king as a mascot. He's chocolate, and most other products are chocolate...so why not make an entire kingdom of chocolate characters? They came close with Happy Ho Ho. Ding dongs looked like chocolate-covered hockey pucks and there were other companies competing in the market to sell such things. A similar food product elsewhere - King Don - meant the character was known as King Don. (What, was Don King too busy to promote these?). Yet another version was known as the Big Wheel, and those get a grade below. (B)

Happy Ho Ho

This Robin Hood-esque entity promotes ho hos, a variant of the Swiss roll. I had to look that up. I didn't know what a ho ho was, and I didn’t know its mascot was simply a jovial Swiss roll. Mascots named simply after an emotion seem lazy. How happy would Happy Ho Ho be if the Little John-equivalent of his world had been killed, the Friar Tuck fried, or the Maid Marian macarooned? As noted above, Happy would have made sense in a Hostess chocolate kingdom but slings and arrows prevented such a courtship. (C+)

Captain Cupcake

Haven't there been more than enough characters promoted to captain over the years? Crunch. Wafers. Planet. Morgan. You get the sense Hostess went the easy way out and seized on an alliterative name. And then there's the Hostess interpretation of a cupcake. A cupcake to me, is a small cake with a dollop of frosting. In the Hostess mascot world, you'd think their cupcake was King Ding Don after changing costumes. And speaking of costumes, was the bit of squiggled icing part of his uniform? (C-)

Chief Big Wheel

Apparently, the food item known as the ding dong was known elsewhere as big wheels. Hostess chose not to bestow a third regal name to their mustached monarch and simply chose a new character. But did we really need one based on a tribal chief? (D)

Chauncey Chocodile

Chocodiles were supposedly fudge-dipped Twinkies. I barely remember the mascot, but I see from commercials he liked to dance around and say his name, the bare minimal requirements for 1970s-era mascots attempting to gain a foothold in a young person's mind. I assume the product name stemmed from its long shape and so someone came up with the concept of a chocolate crocodile. I'll give Hostess a point - it's the only animal mascot in the lot - but take away a half-dozen points for thinking kids would consume the Chocodiles in more time than it takes to eat any other item on this list. They're all miniature snack cakes - come on! (C)

Fruit Pie the Magician

This poor chap always came across as a rough draft to me. He's a fruit pie, so we'll name him...Fruit Pie. You know, for now, but Hostess will come up with something better later I'm sure. Why a magician? Hostess came up with these mascots in the early 1970s - was the magician a popular archetype at the time? To me, this guy's best illusion was convincing audiences he wasn't a chicken McNugget in a cape and top hat. Spats. A wand. You know, the standard magician clothes. I suppose the only way to show it was a pie containing jam-like fruit was to have some of the warm goo ooze out of his body. And parents probably wouldn't want their children watching that. (D)