they're tasty, but pretty notoriously bad for you. The movie Zombieland had a whole subplot about Twinkies because at the time they were lauded as one of the only things that could survive an apocalypse because of how many preserves and stuff there are in them.
I remember it was something like the union for the workers that made them went on strike because the company was raiding their pension or something, and they tried to spin it as "They want to take twinkies away!" and conservatives pushed the spin.
What was up with that?