All of a sudden, Twinkies a hot commodity

It never fails. Whenever something is on the verge of dying or its death is foretold, it suddenly becomes extremely popular - before rigor mortis even sets in.

Michael Jackson's songs are a good example. It was only after he died that we started to actually like a few of his songs as they were played nonstop on the radio.

Now comes the coveted Twinkie.

Nobody was even thinking about that yellow sponge cake, cream-filled snack a few days ago, but now that they're seemingly headed for the Twinkie Cliff, suddenly people can't live without them.

The Twinkie is a piece of nostalgia, they're saying.

It's a piece of their childhood - cellophane wrapper and all.

It's the talk of the town; the talk of Twitter.

At Mermaid's Casino snack bar on Fremont Street over the weekend, there wasn't much talking at all - only because hundreds of people were too busy stuffing their faces with the stuff.

The joint's been going gangbusters, selling its famous - or is that in­famous? - fried Twinkies ever since Hostess Brands Inc. in Irving, Texas, dropped the bomb that it was shutting down its operations and laying off more than 18,000 employees.

Short-order fried Twinkie chef Margaret Olivares was razzing customers all day, showing empty boxes of Twinkies as though they were all sold out.

Psyched you out! There's still some available. About a month's worth, maybe.

What happens after the Twinkies are drained from the reserve tank is anybody's guess.

It's beginning to worry Erlinda Estwick, the snack bar supervisor who sells about 500 fried Twinkies a day.

"I don't know what we're going to do," she said as the long lines kept forming over the weekend, in a scene that was a microcosm of the Hostess assembly line at the Texas plant.

"But we won't worry about that now," she added. "We'll worry about that tomorrow. Right now, we've got fried Twinkies to make."

Los Angeles native Ryan Inouye, 24, was among the masses who took part in what could be the final hurrah.

"I don't know how many times I've just passed this place by and never bothered to come in," he said. "But this time, it was, like, 'Get it while you can.' "

With that, he downed the Twinkie faster than you could list the 39 ingredients in it, among them sorbic acid, cellulose gum (no, not cellulite, although there might be a connection), Polysorbate 60 and calcium sulfate.

But why let a few ingredients get in the way of a time-tested and cherished snack like the Twinkie?

Processed food: It's the American way, after all.

So is trying to capitalize on them now that they're headed for extinction.

Look no further than eBay, where boxes of Twinkies that weren't even contemplated a week ago are now being sold for the silly high price of ... $500 for a simple twin pack?

(Note to reader: For $95 more, you could buy an actual Derek Jeter batting glove with some of the used dirt from "old Yankee" stadium.)

So blow your money wisely.

That's what some of the quick thinking Las Vegans were doing over the weekend.

No sooner had the Twinkie news hit the streets than they, along with their cousins, the Ho Hos and Zingers, were flying off the shelves at Costco's on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Said one sales clerk, when asked if any were still left: "I'm so sorry. But we sold the last on Saturday morning."

That means dozens of customers on a Friday night beat it to the Costco to become a part of history and stock up on what could conceivably be sold at higher prices if the age-old supply-and-demand side of economic principles comes to bear.

"It's a diabetic special like there is no other," said Russ Yonkers of Las Vegas when randomly asked for his opinion just off the Strip on Saturday. "Just be sure to pop your metformin and your glipizide and you're good to go. But remember this: Ain't nobody escaping this life alive, so you might as well live it. I've been looking for Houdini for years, and to no avail."

Still, there were a few who thought that it was wrong for the Twinkie to get all the play and upstage the Ho Ho - that chocolate cupcake with white frosting and cream filling - as it did.

"Talk about discrimination with the Ho Ho, and we're not talking about Vegas ladies of the evening," said Marcia Hopper, a Henderson resident and marketer by trade. "Besides, with the Ho Ho, you have special layers that you can unravel. Plus, they're much tastier."

And then you've got to consider the name, she said.

"The Twinkie is wimpy," she said.

Contact reporter Tom Ragan at tragan@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512.