Ode to Hostess

As per my usual MO, I'm a day late and a dollar short.  I was waiting to see if that small ray of hope over at Hostess shown through, it did not.  So here is my ode to Hostess or my best garage sale find ever.

A few years back when I was living in the small quaint town of Haines, Alaska, my future wife and I were out checking out few garage sales.  Not really looking for anything, more just to get out in the nice day.  We happened upon one sale and I noticed a couple baseball card cardboard storage boxes and right next to that a stack of 79 Hostess panels.  Well I really only wanted the panels since the boxes looked like junk wax, but the guy wanted to sell it all as one. So I bought it. When I got back home I looked through the boxes and sure enough it was a bunch of 1987 Topps and 92 Upper Deck.  Oh well.  At least I got it all for a steal.

When I started looking through the panels, which there was probably close to 50. I was disappointed to realize that out of those 50 there were only 6 different panels.  Which actually makes sense since only certain players were featured on certain products and it looks like who ever cut these out only ate the same products. From my brief search of the internet. I do believe all of these came from Twinkies boxes.  Of course the true history I will never get from the panels. But by looking through them all it's interesting to wonder who cut them and why did they save them?  Why not cut them up into their individual cards?  And to see them all, some are cut very nicely, other not so much. Also there is staining on most of the panels of some sort, but none of them are bent.

So to honor the late Hostess empire and the awesomeness that use to be food issued oddball baseball cards here are the six different panels.

19-22 Tenace, Burroughs, and Barrios.  Who new Gene Tenace real first name was Fury. Pretty cool I'd have led with that.  Most of the panels are like this.  The edges could be straighted.

94-96 Erickson, Hisle, and Thompson.  The only Brewer in my bunch.  I actually had a panel that was pretty badly stained on the Erickson and Thompson cards, but Larry's card was still clean, so I cut it out and sent it to him TTM. Still haven't got it back though.

16-18. Goltz, Page, and Stein. I have nothing witty to remark here so lets move on.

So we are half way through my haul and to be honest nobody really interesting in the bunch. But that doesn't mean that I didn't get a few stars in the lot either.

28-30. Cey, Richard, Luzinski.  Hey there's Ron Cey. Yikes I probably could have picked a better panel than the one with the really bad water, coffee, or whatever stain. Sorry Ron.

103-105. Soderholm, Stargell, Bailor.  Holy crap is that Pirate Hall of Famer Willie Stargell?  Yep. But the last panel is the best one of the bunch.

7-9. Mazzilli, Garvey, and Schmidt. It's a panel with Mr. Clean and HOFer Mike Schmidt.  This panel is by far the most valuable of the lot. I think last time I looks the Standard Catalog had a complete panel listed some were around 15 to 20 bucks. Of course this is the real world and my panels aren't mint, but it's nice to know that one of these panels is "worth" more than what I paid for the whole lot and totally made it worth it.

While not the coolest Hostess stuff I own certainly one of the best finds I've ever had and at a random garage sale in a small remote Alaskan town.

And while I can't even remember the last time I ate a Hostess product it's always kinda sad when a childhood icon slips away.  I realize that the brand will most likely continue in some form, but will we ever see such a great food/baseball cross promotion again? Probably not.