The following article was sent to me by a friend. I think it
demonstrates the addictive power of sugar.


Twinkie Famine Hits eBay
 by Andy Roe
March 23, 2000, 3 p.m. PT

People love their Twinkies.

But because of a recent Teamsters strike in
New England, there has been a shortage of
the beloved snack cake with the mysterious
"creamy" filling. Saddened fans are calling it
the "Twinkie Famine of 2000."
"It's a wave that's going to go right across the country," said Richard
Volpe, director for the union in the United States and Canada, in an
interview with the Associated Press.
So what's a deprived Twinkie lover to do? Well, log on to eBay, of
course.

A search for "twinkies" on the site today yielded more than 190
search results. What are Twinkies worth in this dire time of need?
Well, plenty. We came across an auction for one box with a starting
bid of--prepare yourself--$10,000. At ten Twinkies per box, that's a
thousand bucks a Twinkie. No bids as of yet.

More reasonably, another auction for a lone Twinkie box was going
for only half that amount. The auction title: Last Box of Twinkies?
Get It While You Can.

"Jimmy Dewar, manager of the Continental Baking Company bakery
in Chicago, created the world's first taste-bud-tingling Twinkie in
1930," read the auction description. "A billboard in St. Louis
advertising 'Twinkle Toe Shoes' sparked the idea to name the new
treat 'Twinkies.' Of his invention Dewar once said, 'Twinkies was the
best darn-tootin idea I ever had!' C'mon, keep his dream alive! It's up
to you!"

Some bidders--11 to be exact--are in fact keeping the dream alive.
The current high bid stands at $5,150. The seller (rwaring) has no
feedback, but the top bidder has a feedback rating of 34. (Hopefully
he or she is aware of eBay's new defense against bogus bids; the
site now requires a credit card for bids above $5,000.)

The majority of the Twinkie auctions, however, were not so
exorbitantly priced. We saw auctions ranging from 1 cent to $19.99.
Still, we also saw several in the hundreds of dollars.

There's no word on how long the strike is expected to last, but you
have to wonder: Could the mayhem inspired by the Pokémon
phenomenon be far behind?

"So far, we have not had any customers who have become indignant
over the lack of Twinkies," a spokesman for a New England
supermarket chain told AP. "I think people basically understand."

And so do savvy eBay sellers. Supply and demand baby!