Hostess (snack cakes)
Hostess Cake, mostly known simply as Hostess, is a brand under which snack cakes are sold by Hostess Brands. The brand originated in 1919 when the first Hostess CupCake was sold. However, it is better-known as the brand under which Twinkies are sold, after that product appeared in 1930. The brand was owned by the Continental Baking Company until 1995, when Continental was acquired by Interstate Bakeries Corporation. IBC became "Hostess Brands" in 2009 and began liquidating its assets in 2012 following a strike by the BCTGM union. The defunct business is now known as Old  HB. In 2013, the cake business of Hostess Brands was sold to a "new" Hostess Brands owned by private equity firms Apollo Global Management and C. Dean Metropoulos and Company, and Hostess-branded products officially returned on July 15 of that year. Products and advertisements. In the 1970s and 1980s, Hostess snack foods were frequently featured in whole page comic book advertisements in major publishers such as DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Harvey Comics, Archie Comics and Gold Key Comics. The format featured a complete one page comic strip story, drawn by one of the relevant publisher's artists such as  Neal Adams for DC and Frank Miller for Marvel, where major characters from the publisher of the periodical solve a problem with Hostess Brands products. In the DC and Marvel ads, a superhero typically defeats a villain by distracting and/or bribing them with those products, although there is also a series of advertisements individually featuring the supervillains, The Joker and the Penguin, failing to do the same with their enemies. In the other publishers, their humor focus allowed more varied plots along the same theme. (This was parodied in "Dexter's Laboratory", with the Captain America parody Major Glory from  the "Justice Friends" sketch using "Justice Fruit Pies" to thwart his enemy.) Mascots. The brand's most recognized mascot is Twinkie the Kid, a Twinkie dressed like a wrangler who acts like a person. Other mascots include: