Twinkies will be headed back to the shelves in July, but will they regain the market dominance that they had before?

With the absence of Twinkies in the market, other bakeries have stepped in and released their own versions of cream filled cakes or increased the market saturation of existing products.

Safeway was pro-active and released their The Snack Artist brand Creme Cake several months before Hostess declared bankruptcy.

Other bakeries have their Twinkie wannabes as well. Little Debbie has Cloud Cakes, Blue Bird has Bingles and Weight Watchers has their low calorie Golden Sponge Cake.

Grupo Bimbo is also looking at releasing a competitor to Twinkies. They had been considered one of the front runners for buying the snack cake brands from Hostess, but instead only picked up some smaller assets from Hostess. Now they are looking to take on the new Hostess Brands company with the introduction of new snack cake product.

I decided to pick up a box of Creme Cakes from Safeway last night when I went grocery shopping.

Here you can see that the bottom of one of the Creme Cakes looks similar to a Twinkie.

You can also see the filling in the middle after I had taken a bite.

Of course, I am sure you want to know how they stack up to the original. I am by no means a Twinkie expert, as I would rarely buy them. However, The Snack Artist has less filling than what I remember and the cake is much denser. I remember the Twinkie not being as sweet, but do remember it having a much better balance of sweetness between the filling and the cake. With the Creme Cakes, there is not as much contrast in the sweetness.

I have heard good things about some of the other snack cakes, and also some not so good things :-).

What will happen to some of these wannabes when Twinkies return? Will they fade into the background, or will they retain some of the market share that they have picked up in the absence of the Hostess snack cakes?

Have you found a Twinkie replacement?

Steven