Before Hostess became a famous brand, they were a small Illinois-based bakery called Continental Baking Company. The company was managed by baker James Dewar, who devised the Twinkie out of sponge cake and banana filling during the Great Depression and named it after a shoe brand.

Not long after baking the first Twinkie, Dewar saw a billboard for “Twinkle Toe Shoes” and decided to use a shortened form of the name, “Twinkie,” for his new snack. Twinkies (both the name and the product) took off, and now — almost 100 years later — the name has never been changed.

While the name of the Twinkie did not change, the recipe did, as banana shortages due to World War II caused Hostess to switch to using vanilla cream a few years later. The vanilla flavor proved to be more popular than the original, and that version took off.