Hostess Pudding Pies

These are ridiculously impossible to find.
Rumors are that they stopped making them, however I have found 2 stores that sell them in the last 6 months.



Hostess Pudding Pies entered into my world in my pre-teens in the form of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pudding Pie. In fact, it’s quite possible that this was my first Hostess product experience period. I came upong the TMNT pies during a very focused phase in my early years when I spent my meager allowance every weekend on nothing but snacks and candy. I’m not going to lie and say that it wasn’t the fact that this was a TMNT product that made me first pick it up. If it were now, this kind of marketing would be the decision maker for me to NOT buy it. But thankfully, at that age, I did. These pudding pies were unbelievable. I would usually buy one to accompany an assortment of other random snacks and save the rest of my money to rent a VHS down the street with my buddies. If I remember correctly, this was also around the same time I would down the 1 pounder bag of Twizzlers that were frequently on sale at CVS for $1.29. These pies were weird, I will admit. They were green. They had unknown cream in them (I had never before in my life eaten pudding in any form). But they hit the spot. They were awesome. It was often a dilemma for me to figure out at what point in the sequence of snacking that the TMNT pie would be enjoyed. Naturally it was the highlight, the dessert of desserts; so often I would save it to the end as the real treat. But sometimes I just couldn’t wait and it would be the first treat to get taken down.
What's also unique about the Pudding Pies is their packaging. They are wrapped in a wax paper that is noticeably thicker than the wax paper used to package Hostess' other Pies. Hostess' Fruit Pies are wrapped in a significantly thinner, more translucent wax. The Pudding Pies have no opacity to them at all. The stiffness of the wax paper feels like if you folded it, it might crack. Holding them in your hands, you know you have a different product.
I can’t remember what it was that made them disappear from my routine. I’m betting it was a mixture of me getting sick of them and the store not carrying them. Frankly I had not even thought of them until 6 months ago when I saw a regular style Vanilla Pudding Pie at a convenience store and a flood of nostalgia swarmed over me. Of course I picked it up. Unfortunately I cannot remember now where I got that one pie from.
However, last week I found two Hostess Chocolate Pudding Pies in a corner store on Bedford and North 7th in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and immediately snatched them up. Now I’m not really a big fan of the chocolate ones; I grew up on the TMNT ones that had vanilla filling and the outer cake was really just vanilla (plain?) dyed green. But nevertheless I had to have them.
So the question is what happened to them? They are definitely out of major circulation. If you do a quick google search on them you come up with several pages asking the same question. Some go as far back as 2004, but I’m pretty sure they were out of major circulation long before that. There’s even a site where you can sign an e-petition requesting their return. But this doesn’t explain how I found these 3 pies in the last 6 months. Sure, the joke with Hostess products (Twinkies in particular) is that their shelf life is ridiculously long. But what really are the chances that there are some distributors that have a stock of Pudding Pies that have sat in their warehouse for at least 5 – 10 years? Surely there most be more out there, and you better believe I’ll be back on Bedford and North 7th next week to check for more…