The Hostess Fruit Pie

The Hostess crew lures children to their obese doom with a hypnotic siren song of fatty goodness.

I've mentioned it a few times before on the site, but in case you hadn’t read those articles, I was once in danger of becoming a Grade ‘A’ certified fat-o in my early twenties. I didn’t exercise and I didn’t watch what I ate, and believe me I’ve got a sweet tooth. I wasn’t obese by any means, but just one glance at my disproportionately gigantic face in pictures from about five years ago was a vision of things that just shouldn’t be allowed to exist. At some point I decided to start cutting back on calories and now I’m at about an average size with an average pot belly and an even more average sized face that no longer scares children. Occasionally, I’ll allow myself to overindulge in the finer things in life like cake, ice cream, or whatever sweet treat gets shoved in my cram hole. My favorite overindulgence has to be the Hostess Fruit Pie, more specifically, the cherry version of this particular delight.

The fruit pie is one of the grandest achievements of mankind and it is ranked only slightly behind the pyramids and the forced placement of Leprechauns onto reservations. In fact, I’ve had a strange association with cherry fruit pies throughout my life. They even once acted as my Kryptonite. No, I wasn’t chained to a glowing hunk of fruit pie with my strength slowly being drained from me, but rather they were a device to try to lure me into the arms of a chubby girl. You see, there was a girl that I worked with that really liked me a lot. I wasn’t interested in her, but her diabolical plan nearly succeeded when I was presented with a big box with a gold bow on it near Christmastime (oops, I mean Holidaytime) at my workplace. After the initial fear passed that the box might possibly contain the severed head of someone or something that I loved, I opened it to find it packed, and I mean packed, with cherry fruit pies. By god, it was if she had consulted with Satan on how to lure men to their doom. Still, I managed to hold out and turn her down. Then I went home and I ate the pies like a ravenous pig gorging itself on a mob boss’s body. To this day I still fondly look back on, “The Year of the Pies.”

I have no idea what this has to do with Fruit Pies, but I likes it!

Anyway, let’s take a closer look at this product shall we? For me, the real magic of the fruit pie lies in its lovely yet terrifying nutritional stats. It’s singularly one of the tastiest confections to ever grace my food orifice and one of the poorest things that could actually qualify as “food” aside from a roasted plague rat. The list of ingredients closely resembles the death gas the Red Skull uses, except fruit pies contain more cornstarch. The calorie count is enough to make Slim Goodbody’s horrific skinless body explode in anger. Cherry has 470 calories, while Lemon has a whopping 500. That means a fruit pie is 1/3 the average daily calorie count for a woman or 1/4th for a guy. On the plus side a fruit pie would make an excellent fuel source if you were freezing to death. There’s enough fat in one of these things to start a blazing fire. In fact, Luke Skywalker survived the icy climate of Hoth because the Tauntaun’s inner fat lining is actually made of Hostess fruit pies. You see the fruit pie is the main source of food for Hoth’s indigenous Tauntaun. It’s true, I read it on Wikipedia.

I always thought an interesting experiment would be to try and replace one day’s worth of calories into four fruit pies eaten at various intervals. I'd also have to consume them with milk, because that is the only proper way to eat a fruit pie. (The British eat them with fried tomatoes and lamb's scrotum). The only drawback to this experiment is that I’m afraid I might turn into some sort of disgusting blob creature or my heart might stop instantaneously in a sort of coronary strike. Who knows, I just might try it for the sake of delicious science and comedy. Regardless, the fruit pie is a sweet mistress who takes all my troubles away by ushering me to a land of gum drops, teddy bears, and giant mechanized walking tanks (or G.M.W.T.s for short). All I can say is thank you Hostess for bringing this singularly enjoyable thing to the world. To semi-quote Coheed and Cambria: “Dear Fruit Pie, I love you. When I go to sleep, you’re shape is all I see.”

 - Paul - 11/13/05

Also: In any Hostess fruit pie discussion you can’t mention them without at least a cursory nod toward all the awesome ads found in comics from the 1970s.