'There’s something comforting about them'
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Is it a boy-girl thing? Husband-wife? Is it a modern power struggle in miniature?
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A thousand tiny choices await inside every bag of Hostess Hickory Sticks.
Salty, smoky and oh so Canadian, the matchstick shaped potato snacks were introduced in the 1970s, according to Candy Funhouse.
The diminutive indulgences seem to divide ind ulgers into two camps: A stick a bite, and Ravenclaw.
“There’s something comforting about them,” Chris Agro posted on the Made in Canada – Canadian Products Facebook group and on Instagram last October. “That crinkle of the brown and yellow bag, the burst of hickory smoke, and the fact that they’re still ours.”
He said he eats them by the handful and his wife eats them one at a time. Either way, each are likely to have less salt and other toppings on their hands than they would if they were disagreeing about a more conventional chip.
Are you in one camp or the other? Or are you like this sensible commenter: “I tilt the bag directly into my mouth ahaha.”
Hickory Sticks are also an unlikely orphan of capitalism. Canadians of a certain vintage will remember all manner of Hostess snack products on the shelves in decades past. The smoky little survivors are the last product bearing the brand after a merger with Lay’s in 1988 (parent PepsiCo bought out General Foods’ remaining interest in 1992). The Hostess brand chips were revived as Munchies in 2024.
Hostess the company started with Edward Snyder cooking chips on his mother’s kitchen stove in a village outside Kitchener, Ont. in 1935. It wasn’t until the 1950s that potato chips entered the snacking zeitgeist.