Review: Hostess Mystery Flavor Twinkies Are A Fruity, Unsolved Mystery

Who doesn't love a good mystery? Well, when it comes to eating, we all usually like to know what our mouths are getting into before taking a bite. Mystery meat, anyone? No thanks. Enjoyment of food is usually centered around familiar flavors, and having our expectations met when tasting them, but the fine folks at Hostess have teamed up with content creator Taylor Calmus, aka Dude Dad, to challenge our foodie perceptions by creating the first ever mystery flavor of Twinkies.

Dude Dad and Hostess will be dropping hints of the flavor on Instagram, and eventually revealing what it actually is in early October. Well, who can wait until then? I love food, and mysteries, I am a dad and somewhat of a dude, so I took up this case to try and solve this mystery. Before the box of mystery Twinkies landed in my hands, I started to investigate. Is it safe to assume that past Twinkie flavors — like key lime, cotton candy, peppermint, pumpkin spice, and the mostly forgotten banana Twinkies — are off the table? Dude Dad's favorite snack is beef jerky, and his wife's is scotcheroos — could that provide a clue for a possible flavor profile? Only my mouth and brain could sort this out ... hopefully. The following mysterious chew and review is based on taste, air of mystery, flavor guesses, and overall lovability.

Hostess' Mystery Flavor Twinkies are currently available, exclusively at nationwide Walmart locations. They'll be on shelves for a limited time only through October, or while supplies last. After that, they'll probably join the list of Hostess snacks that now exist only in our memories.

These Twinkies are individually wrapped, and come in boxes of 10. While it's a commonly believed myth that Twinkies never expire, based on the best by date on the box, these cakes should stay fresh for up to a month and a half.

For a product with a flavor that's a mystery, it's curious what clues we can glean from its ingredient list, which is printed on the back of the box. The list is headlined by the basics — sugar, water, enriched flour, and high fructose corn syrup. Alongside preservatives like potassium sorbate and coloring agents like yellow 5 and red 40, the only hint here is "natural and artificial flavors". That doesn't really tell us anything. So, how does this differ from a regular Twinkie? Looking at the ingredients of the two side by side, it's hard to really tell. They're practically identical, although the mystery version has modified food starch, while the original has modified cornstarch. Neither specify what their natural and artificial flavors actually are, and I'm sure the mystery lies within those vague words.

A serving size of Mystery Twinkies is a pair of cakes. That nets 280 calories, with 9 grams of fat, 35 milligrams of cholesterol, 47 grams of carbohydrates, 32 grams of added sugar. The 370 milligrams of sodium accounts for 16% of the recommended daily allowance, so it may be a good idea not to overindulge, even though one serving provides 6% of your recommended daily iron intake. Customers should be advised that these Twinkies include the common allergens, wheat, egg, milk, and soy.

Nothing looked out of the ordinary with these mystery Twinkies. 4 inches of squishy, golden brown sponge cake, dotted with white cream filling on its backside. My search for flavor clues kicked off by sniffing the cake's exterior like a bloodhound. It smelled more like cream than cake, but I wasn't able to discern much in the odorous test. Before I tasted the cream, I wanted to see if the cake itself had any out of place flavoring. A small nibble only confirmed that it was the usual sponge-like cake Twinkies are famous for.

I cut the Twinkie in half, and revealed a cream that was unassumingly plain with its fluffy whiteness. A first lick of the cream didn't even result in a flavor guess, so I licked on. My first best guess was lavender-tinged marshmallow fluff. I deputized my wife to help in the investigation, and she said it tasted like Fruity Pebbles. When I heard that, I began to second-guess myself. Further licks did present more of a fruit-forward flavoring, and the Mrs. and I agreed that it was kind of reminiscent of our kid's bubblegum flavored toothpaste.

The first round of taste testing commenced with a complete bite, where cake and cream presented two different forms of soft textures. When the cake came into play, the cream's flavor turned rather bitter. That didn't actually help solve the mystery, but instead, made the answer even more elusive.

After downing one mystery flavor Twinkie, I was no closer to an answer than I was before I unwrapped it from its plastic cover. As I tackled a second Twinkie, the idea of a mildly bitter fruit started to take a great hold on my taste buds. But what was this bitter fruit flavoring? Was this some sort of lemon meringue? I gave the hunt the night off, and started anew the next morning for a fresh perspective. My morning Twinkie nosh still had me thinking something citrussy, but then again, my mouth was beginning to convince my brain that maybe the flavor was banana pudding? To borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, this flavor is "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

Whatever the flavor actually is, it certainly had a lasting impact on my mouth. The cream's mystery flavor left behind an aftertaste that remained, well, a mystery. All and all, this Twinkie is palpable, inoffensive, and keeps an eater wanting more of it ... mainly to try and unravel its creamy secrets. That last part is actually the most genius aspect of mystery flavor Twinkies. Since the mystery isn't easily solved, it makes investigators eat way more of them than they should. Perhaps Dude Dad should quit his day job and become a full time Hostess flavor consultant. His work in the flavor lab would even make Sherlock Holmes tip his hat.