Easter, I have to say, is one of my least favorite "big holidays". Sure, you get some candy, a bunch of God-awful hard-boiled eggs, and if you're lucky a couple small toys, but these thrills are short-lived. As you grow older, they are slowly phased out. At 20, I won't be hunting eggs, and while my mom will probably still give me some candy, it won't be anywhere near as much as I got when I was younger. There is an upside though. When I was 8, buying every Easter based snack cake would have been out of the question, and even if I did somehow talk Mom into it, I wouldn't have had a web site to share the wonders of cream filling with the world.

Lucky for all of you, I'm not 8 anymore, so I was able to buy every Easter snake cake that Wal-Mart had to offer, and I do have a web site so you all can enjoy reviews of every Easter snack cake and a couple that have nothing to do with Easter. Let's start this party off with the Hostess cakes sitting right in front of me.

When I went to Wal-Mart, I wandered into the Hostess aisle looking for the chocolate cupcakes. As it turns out, they were pretty much the only thing not Easterfied, but these are pretty close. Only not chocolate.

The absolute best part of these is they are the only snack I found created just for Easter. The rest are every day cakes with a picture of a rabbit slapped on the box, and maybe a different color icing. But these are different. When you see a Hostess cake named "HOPPER'S", you know you won't be able to get any more once Easter passes.

As for the cake itself, it looks wonderful. The pink icing and pastel sprinkles scream "Easter!" as loud as anything else out there. Smells good too. Let's see how it tastes.

Not bad. Not bad at all. A little sweet, but I find most Hostess and Little Debbie cakes to be a little sweet, so if you like other snack cakes, the sweetness won't really be a problem. In terms of actual flavor, these are a lot like Zebra Cakes, you know, the ones that they reshape into trees around Christmas. I'll give these an A for presentation, but a B- for taste. They're good, but I don't think I could eat more than two or three before the sweetness would start to get to me.

Remember those Zebra cakes I mentioned? Well, they aren't just repackaged for Christmas. These guys nail the Easter look and branding, but I can't give them the originality points I gave to HOPPER'S, because Little Debbie packages this cake in about 500 different ways, whereas Hostess normally only carries chocolate cupcakes. Why don't we find out if my memory is accurate, and these actually do taste exactly like the HOPPER'S?

Ok, I lied. The taste is similar, but not exactly the same. In the HOPPER'S there is a big glob of cream filling in the middle, causing a huge burst of sweetness on the second or third bite. With these the cream filling is evenly distributed through the entire cake, making the sweetness less intense and more bearable. So, a B for the taste, but a C+ the presentation. If Little Debbie wants to make a memorable cake, they need to do something to make it stand out among the dozen or so cakes just like this.

Before I get started on this next two, I think I should point out that I hate marshmallow snacks, so these will probably be rated pretty low, so don't let my review stop you from getting these if you like marshmallow stuff.

Of all the desserts I'm going to review, these have my favorite Easter Bunny. I just love how he's paining the egg, and he's hat, while ugly, works for him. Oh yeah. And they replaced the "o" with an egg. Whoever designed this box needs a raise

Because of my hatred of all things marshmallow, I have never actually had a Snoball. Never even wanted to. But for some reason the purple coconut makes the thing damn appetizing. I hope it isn't tricking me.

Better than I expected, but the texture of the marshmallow makes biting into it really unpleasant. once you get past that though, these are damn good. On taste, I'll give them a C that turns into B once you chew it up enough to make the marshmallow less marshmallowy. A- for presentation.

The Snoballs at least look good, but these things scare the shit out of me. I'm not gonna say much about them, because I want to get done with them and move onto better snacks quickly.

That thing made me want to die. I'm extending the grading system and giving it a G for taste. The box is nice, but kind of boring, so C+ for presentation.

I have always enjoyed HoHos, so this is pretty much the only snack that I knew going into this wouldn't kill my soul. Unfortunately, Hostess got lazy on the box. We get a bunny and some vaguely Eastery colors. They were printing a new box anyway, couldn't they have changed the name or something. Oh year, see the HoHo on the box? It's impossible to cut one in half that neatly. Try it some time. BTW, if you haven't caught on yet, everything above the pictures of the unwrapped cakes is written before I eat the cake. Everything under the cake pictures is written immediately after sampling the snack. Soooo...

These taste exactly like I remember, which is a good thing because me likey. A little less cream filling would be nice, but it's not quite enough to give me a sugar rush big enough to make my head explode, so it's ok. Let's give it a nice A- for taste. The box, on the other hand, isn't so nice. D+ for presentation.

Now this is more like it. These aren't brownies. These are Easter Brownies. And check out that non-standard yellow icing on top. You know, I'm starting to notice a pattern. Little Debbie seems to be putting forth a bit more effort than Hostess. Maybe we'll find out for sure if I feel like making myself sick from eating snack cakes around Halloween or Christmas.

Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all. Not as good as a real brownie, but this is a packaged Little Debbie cake. What do you expect. These, like most of the snacks reviewed on this page, were a bit sweet. Once again though, you shouldn't hold that against them. At this stage I think it's pretty clear that it's me, not the brownie that has the problem. B- on Taste. It's good, but I don't think I could eat too many without having to just force them down. A for presentation, for two reasons: the box is damn pretty, and these are Eastery enough that you won't be finding them in a month.

That's all the Easter cakes I have. I know I promised King Kong Twinkies and cryptic Chip and Dale snacks, but I decided these would be out of place in an Easter Article. I might still to a quick review on the news page, but I can't see myself doing a full sized article about them though.

--Jeff

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