The World’s Oldest Twinkie Is Turning 50

Lori S | January 6, 2026 |

Have you ever heard that Twinkies last forever?  Well, they do and they don’t . . .

The world’s OLDEST Twinkie is turning 50 this year.  A chemistry teacher in Blue Hill, Maine named Roger Bennatti opened it as an experiment for his class in 1976.  It’s lived at the school ever since.  (Blue Hill is about 30 miles south of Bangor.)

They were talking about food additives when a kid asked how long a Twinkie would last.  Roger said he didn’t know, so they tested it.

He retired in 2004, and handed it off to a student from that class who’s now the dean of the same school.  She’s had it in a glass case on her shelf for 22 years.

So, what does it look like?  It does still have that basic Twinkie shape, but doesn’t look like something you’d want to eat.  It’s fully dried out and looks more like a tiny, very stale, loaf of bread. (Here’s a close-up.)

Roger just did an interview with the “Bangor Daily News” and joked that he and the Twinkie are “a lot alike” now. “We’re old, gray, and flaky.”

For the record, the official shelf life of a Twinkie back then was just 26 days.  Hostess says it’s up to 45 days now, mostly thanks to better packaging.

(Here’s a photo of Roger and his former student Libby Rosemeier with the Twinkie.  They did a fun interview about it back in 2019.)

 

(WPFO)