Instead, they set the stage for its eventual demise. A private equity company, Ripplewood Holdings, paid about $130 million dollars to take Hostess private, and the company's two major unions, the Teamsters and the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, sacrificed about $110 million in annual wages and benefits. But its labor contracts were still deeply flawed. Worse yet, the company left bankruptcy saddled with more debt than it went in with -- "an unusual circumstance that the company justified on expectations of 'growing' into its capital structure," as Kaplan put it.

Suffice to say, Hostess didn't do much growing. It continued to lose hundreds of millions of dollars making and selling starchy snacks that much of the public had lost its taste for, while failing to launch any great new products. The interest on its loans swelled the company's debt. By January 2012, it was back in Chapter 11, trying to wrestle a new contract with more concessions from its unions.

Hostess insisted that unless workers accepted further cuts, the company would have to shut its doors for good. That's the sort of threat that distressed companies often make in labor negotiations, and unions are inclined to consider it a bluff. But after getting a look inside Hostess' books, the Teamsters concluded that the threat was serious. Its members narrowly approved the contract in September.

The bakers' union, which represents about a third of the Hostess' workforce, did not. Instead they launched a strike last week that Hostess CEO Greg Rayburn says forced the company to take the final, dramatic step of liquidating everything and firing workers. Per the AP:

Although many workers decided to cross picket lines this week, Hostess said it wasn't enough to keep operations at normal levels; three plants were closed earlier this week. Rayburn said Hostess was already operating on thin margins and that the strike was a final blow. "The strike impacted us in terms of cash flow. The plants were operating well below 50 percent capacity and customers were not getting products," Rayburn said.

It's not clear what, other than perhaps a misplaced faith that belief that they really did have the upper hand, might have convinced the bakers to strike. Certainly, the Teamsters all but begged them to accept the new contract. Some, interviewed by CNNMoney, said that their jobs simply weren't worth saving at the pay levels Hostess was offering. If that was really the prevailing opinion, it's a pity, because a lot of people at that company did seem to believe their jobs were valuable enough to hold onto, even if at a lesser pay grade.

Already, a few parties have tried to politicize this affair. The AFL-CIO today called it "a microcosm of what's wrong with America, as Bain-style Wall Street vultures make themselves rich by making Americans poor." GOProud sent a winking blast email headlined "Unions Kill Twinkies" (literally, they wrote in a wink).