Hostess Got Me With the Rock Stickers

When I was in my teens, Hostess was a company that created delectable potato chip flavors. Now, they were nothing like the flavors of today. I know this because yesterday I saw a bag of 'grilled cheese and ketchup' chips on the shelf and I know there are stranger flavors out there yet.

The potato chip itself was fine - they tasted alright (ok, I loved them!) and my especially favorite kind of chips were dill pickle.

Trust me to choose the near most disgusting (an phony) flavor out there.

I would use my allowance to buy chips. If there was a treat offered, I wanted those chips.

I never realized why until recently - a memory hit me.....


Those 80's rock stickers!

Remember them?

Yup. They got me.Big time.

I loved them more than I loved the chips. Hostess managed to slap the two most amazing things they could find together to create the perfect consumer conundrum for me (or not) - potato chips I love combined with those little rock stickers I had to have!

I don't remember seeing a hostess commercial, but I didn't need one! I was sold as soon as I saw those stickers.

The rock stickers - the complete set was highly elusive (I never completed mine) - but every book binder I had in school was slathered in these little square celebrity bits.


Platinum Blonde, Cindy Lauper, Madonna, Van Halen, Honeymoon Suite......I swooned each time I heard that crisp, fresh chip bag open.......

....and the first thing I did was dig out that sticker! We'd trade them, save them, hoard them and hide them. I kept mine in the tiny cellophane packages until I couldn't stand it any more.

When this memory hit me, I enjoyed the simplicity of it for awhile - until I realized something major.

THOSE rock stickers to me as a teenager were the same way that breakfast cereal prizes were to me as a kid.....and I never did complete the set.

For shame.