8 Discontinued Hostess Snacks We'll Probably Never Eat Again

Few snacks are more nostalgic than a Hostess cake. Simple, sweet, and, perhaps more importantly, sold cheaply in single-serving packs at gas stations, convenience stores, and grocery stores across the country. Hostess products have been many kids' snacks of choice for over a century since the first Hostess cupcake was sold in 1919.

Whether you were trading for them in the cafeteria or picking it up on the way home from school, you probably have a Hostess cake that you associate with your childhood. And nothing's worse than growing up, getting a craving, and heading to the grocery store, only to find out that your favorite Hostess cake no longer exists.

In the 100-plus years since its founding, the Hostess brand has changed hands many times. It's also tried all sorts of different experimental snacks that, though they may have been popular, just couldn't stand the test of time. Here are eight discontinued Hostess snack cakes that you may never find again.

It was the early '90s, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were everywhere. Their first TV series was on the air, their live-action movies were on the way, and, perhaps more importantly, their merch was flying off the shelves and making millions of dollars. Turtle merch was absolutely inescapable during the height of their popularity, and so it's no surprise that Hostess tried to get in on the fun, too.

Hence was born the Hostess Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pie. This was an empanada-shaped hunk of pie crust, deep-fried, dunked in green-tinted glaze, and filled with "vanilla puddin'," according to the label. It looks and sounds almost identical to one of the brand's fruit pies, which it still offers today, but these also came with trading cards and stickers, and their wrappers could be collected and exchanged for all sorts of fabulous, turtle-themed prizes.

Curiously, this was actually a revived version of a previously discontinued product. Hostess pulled its regular pudding pies from shelves in 1987, only to resurrect them in turtle form a few years later. But unfortunately, Ninja Turtle Pies were phased out in 1991, and haven't made a comeback since.

Strangely enough, the Ninja Turtles weren't the only pop-culture property to provoke Hostess to dye one of its regular products green for a promotional tie-in. In the early 2000s, though, it wasn't turtle power, but ogre fever that made its way to shelves. In 2004, as "Shrek 2's" home video release drew nearer, Hostess put out a special line of tie-in Twinkies, this time featuring a bright green "ogre filling."

Ostensibly, this was just a regular old Twinkie with the addition of some green dye; the flavor itself wasn't any different. But they were apparently popular enough that Hostess brought them back in 2010 to promote the cinematic release of "Shrek Forever After."

They were also popular enough that the U.S. government took notice. In 2005, Tom Harkin, a senator from Iowa, expressed his concerns about childhood obesity and the advertising of junk food. "Shrek has a powerful appeal to kids' minds," Harkin addressed the Senate. "Kids see the movie 'Shrek' and they like Shrek. And Shrek, why, he likes Twinkies, so Twinkies must be okay to eat" (per GovInfo).

Nor is Shrek the only film franchise to make Twinkies go green: in 2016, to coincide with the "Ghostbusters" reboot, Hostess put out a new line of green-filled Twinkies, although this time they were made with a key lime flavor. Green "mystery flavor" Twinkies also hit shelves throughout Canada in 2025.

Hostess still makes a couple of different kinds of breakfast snacks, including the infamous powdered donuts, coffee cakes, and honey buns. But once upon a time, it also offered a line of aptly named Sweet Rolls: spiral-shaped and generously frosted cakes that came in cherry, raspberry, and cinnamon flavors.

These came in packs of six, with the rolls often stuck to each other and the paper tray beneath them by the abundance of frosting poured over them. As the package declares, they were "delicious warm," and instructions for heating them in the microwave were printed on the back.

Hostess Brands declared bankruptcy in 2012, effectively discontinuing its entire roster of snacks. The company was purchased by Gores Holdings four years later, but not all of its products came back to shelves after the buyout; Sweet Rolls appear to be a casualty of this brief hiatus.

One Sweet Roll lover even launched a Change.org petition to lobby for the snack's return in 2020. The petition has garnered 664 signatures and is still active as of this writing, but Sweet Rolls remain a thing of the past.

These days, you'll only find original, chocolate, and banana Twinkies on shelves, but Hostess used to be more willing to experiment with different flavors for its most iconic snack cakes. That includes Tiger Tails, which were introduced way back in 1966. Although they were regular Twinkies on the inside, the outside was coated with stripes of raspberry jelly, then sprinkled with coconut. 

Sometime later, Tiger Tails were pulled from shelves for unknown reasons, but they cropped back up around 1986, only to be discontinued again. They made another return in 2013 as a limited-edition Walmart exclusive, but fans of the cakes noticed something had changed: Tiger Tails had lost their jelly drizzle and coconut coating. Instead, they were just regular old Twinkies with a tiger stripe print on the wrapper and an orange-flavored cream inside. 

The original Tiger Tails are still available in certain Middle Eastern and African markets. The rest of the world, though, is still without both the original raspberry-coconut variety and the reintroduced orange cream kind.

And speaking of variations on a Twinkie, Hostess also once sold a product known as the Chocodile, which was a log of the signature golden cream-filled sponge cake enrobed in a waxy chocolate like the coating on other Hostess staples like Ho Hos and Ding Dongs. Chocodiles even had their own mascot, Chauncey Chocodile, who advertised the brand with the slogan, "It takes a while to eat a Chocodile."

For a time, there was some controversy around whether the cake inside was actually a Twinkie or something different, with some swearing they detected a textural difference between the standard Twinkie and its chocolate-coated cousin. A taste test and debate, held in Vacaville, California, and televised as part of the Food Network's "Unwrapped," settled the argument by determining they were one and the same.

But if you want to weigh in for yourself, you're out of luck; Chocodiles were discontinued sometime after the Hostess bankruptcy, and are no longer listed among the offerings on the Hostess website. The company brought them back as Chocodile Twinkies in 2014 with a smaller, fun-size format, then again in 2017 as Fudge-Covered Twinkies, but neither offering has managed to stick. A similar product did hit shelves in 2023: a marriage between a Twinkie and a Ding Dong as part of Hostess' Mashups line. This was a puck of yellow, cream-filled cake topped with a chocolate coating, and it's the closest thing we've seen to a Chocodile in this decade.

You've probably seen deep-fried Twinkies at state fairs, street festivals, and carnivals, but it's a lesser-known fact that Hostess used to sell its own pre-fried version. You'd find these in the freezer aisle of the grocery store, already slathered in funnel cake batter and partially fried, then take them home and bake them off in the oven for an indulgent taste of the fairgrounds at home. 

Prepackaged deep-fried Twinkies started to hit shelves in 2016 as a Walmart exclusive. They also came in a chocolate variant (different from a Chocodile; these had a chocolate-flavored breading and filling, not a chocolate glaze). However, they were discontinued by the following year and haven't made a return since, despite a pretty positive reception. If you're craving a deep-fried Twinkie, you'll have to wait until fair season rolls around to get your hands on one or maybe try to make one yourself.

Even though some of its most enduring snacks contain chocolate, Hostess has had a checkered past when it comes to this perennially popular dessert flavor. Enter the Choco Bliss, which was available at least as early as 1986, and marketed as "a chocolate lover's dream." This was a devil's food cake sandwich filled with chocolate cream, then topped on both sides with a layer of chocolate frosting.

In practice, it was effectively a triple-chocolate version of another popular Hostess snack: the Suzy Q, which has vanilla cream instead.  Still, it definitely had its fans, even if they couldn't save it from discontinuation. Choco Bliss was pulled in the early '90s, but Hostess later introduced a similar product by the name of Choco-Licious. These took things a step further, going quadruple chocolate with the addition of chocolate sprinkles on top. 

Even they didn't last long, though; they were quietly discontinued in the ensuing years. If you're craving something similar, Hostess still offers a double-chocolate Twinkie and the classic Suzy Q, but they're not quite the same.

Ho Hos were some of Hostess' longest-lasting snacks, first baked in 1967. But they may have since become the most recently discontinued Hostess product at the time of writing; Ho Hos were discontinued in December of 2025. This was effectively Hostess' take on a miniature Swiss roll or yule log: cream filling rolled into a log of spiraling chocolate cake, then coated with chocolate frosting.

It appears Hostess never made an official announcement about the discontinuation of Ho Hos. They disappeared from store shelves, then the official website's list of offerings, with no warning. In the months that followed, some customers began sounding the alarm about the cakes' abrupt disappearance, with one Reddit commenter describing a surreal experience: "My grandma gave me a list when I went to the store a few days ago, and Ho Hos were on her list. I looked everywhere in the store, and even went to a different one. I couldn't find them."

You may be able to satisfy your Ho Ho craving with a similar Little Debbie product: the brand's Swiss Rolls are nearly identical in appearance, if not exactly in taste.