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By Paul Losch
About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mai...
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About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mainly in the Bay Area with different companies. My former wife went back to medical school after we had been married a few years, and we moved into married student housing at Stanford, had our two now adult children while she was a medical student, and moved into Palo Alto when she started her Residency. Been here ever since. As my kids were going through the Palo Alto schools, I was actively involved in their activities, most notably head umpire for Palo Alto Little League and 9 years as a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission, among other activities. My kids both are grown, my son teaches 5th grade locally, and my daughter, fluent in Mandarin, is working in China. I sold the business I owned and ran for 8 years in 2012, worked on the Obama campaign, and am consulting for non-profit organizations, which gives me a nice, flexible schedule. Lots of stamps in my passport, and for fun, I like live performances &emdash; theater and music - and of course the Giants!
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Let Us Praise Hostess Twinkies and Wonder Bread
Uploaded: Nov 16, 2012
The company making these and other products, such as Ho-Ho's and its version of a Cupcake, were part of my growing up.
"Wonder Bread: you wonder if its bread!" It was a major factor in a Jif or Skippy peanut butter (smooth not chunky) and jelly sandwich, along with some Welch's grape jam. And the Wonderbread wrapper was greatit looked like balloons!
What a lucky lunch pail I carried to school in those days. Along with a little box of SunMaid raisins. I bought a carton of milk at school.
I did enjoy the occasional Twinkie, an ersatz sponge bread filled with a faux cream. We had enough real cupcakes baked in my household that the Hostess variety was in a category of its own. I did like Ho-Ho's, a variation on the theme of Twinkies' and Cupcakes.
My business experience suggests that the Hostess company needed to shut down. The key product offerings were obsolete, there did not appear to be a culture that could adapt and develop products that kept up with the times. The key Hostess products lost their allure a long time ago, for parents, kids, and the competition.
I find it regrettable that the company has 18,000 employees who will have to move on from working at a company where they may have limited transferrable skills. Worked on the Ho-Ho line? Not sure what that means when seeking employment in another mass produced bakery organization.
My food shopping practices in recent times have been such that I have not even seen Twinkies or Ho-Ho's on the shelf, let alone purchased them. I think I am a microcosm of many, who once consumed these products, but moved on, and did not pass them along to the next generation.
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