Hostess CupCake's Slogans & Taglines

Hostess CupCake is an iconic American snack cake widely regarded as the first commercially produced cupcake. First sold on May 10, 1919 by the Taggart Baking Company as the "Chocolate Cup Cake," it was renamed Hostess CupCakes after Continental Baking Company acquired Taggart in 1925. The brand’s defining moment came in 1950, when employee D.R. "Doc" Rice introduced the vanilla creme filling and the signature seven white squiggles across the chocolate icing—features that distinguish it to this day. Marketing slogans evolved from the joyful promise of "You get a big delight in every bite" to the playful, curiosity-driven "Hey! Where's the cream filling?" famously promoted by the animated mascot Captain Cupcake alongside Twinkie the Kid. Despite Hostess Brands’ bankruptcy and liquidation in 2012, Apollo Global Management acquired and revived the brand in 2013, ensuring the classic chocolate cupcake—and later innovations like Golden, Strawberry, and Red Velvet—remained on American shelves. Today, with annual sales once exceeding 600 million units, the Hostess CupCake endures as a century-old symbol of American snack-cake nostalgia.