18Oct
What Happened To Fruit Pie The Magician?
So this is a sad moment for me. As a kid I adored Hostess cakes. My grandmother lived in Natick, MA and on the front side of the Natick Mall right before Speen Street there was a Hostess Factory and Store where we used to stop on every trip to her house. Driving to see grandma on Sundays was like a Pavlov experiment. The minute we entered Wayland I started salivating for Fruit Pies. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Twinkies, Cupcakes, Ding Dongs, Ho Ho’s or Suzie Q’s but there was something about a Fruit Pie (Yes, it deserves to be capitalized) from Hostess that made all the bad things go away. Plus Fruit Pie the Magician was the coolest. FPTM was the Hostess Fruit Pies mascot and everyday hero to millions of kids across the country. The guy could make Fruit Pies instantly appear with a wave of his magic wand! I mean come on. Could there be anything more amazing to a 10 year old than a cartoon magician who made snack cakes appear out of thin air and tried to save the day with sugary goodness? I don’t think so.
I recently found out that Hostess retired good ol’ FPTM from their wrappers and marketing efforts in 2006. I have to admit it might be a bit premature especially with all the crappy tasting novelty snack foods currently out there and all the hokey advertising that pushes them. You want to hear about good marketing? I swear for about 2 years my mom thought there was real fruit in Fruit Pies. Now that’s good marketing! It was genius. Kid’s were getting their sugar doses while parents thought they were good for them. If we can get back to those days at least we won’t think or know we are getting fat. As my mom always said, “what you don’t know wont hurt you”. She is a smart lady.
So here’s to you FPTM. I hope you enjoy your twilight years and if you bump into Twinkie the Kid make sure to tell him I think he is a pr#ck and nobody liked him.
May 6th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Nice post. Let’s hope the Magician is restored to Fruit Pie wrappers soon. I started the Save Fruit Pie The Magician website back in 2006 — http://home.earthlink.net/~fruitpie/index.html. Thanks for helping to spread the word.
August 28th, 2011 at 2:08 pm
Hey! Wanted to go out of a comment. I really enjoyed reading this article. Sustain the awesome effort.