Maker: Twinkies to last more than a month

Twinkies don't last forever, but they'll have more staying power than most people remember when they return to shelves next week.

Hostess Brands LLC says the spongy yellow cakes will have a shelf life of 45 days when they start hitting shelves again on Monday. That's nearly three weeks longer than the 26 days the previous owner had stated as the shelf life for Twinkies.

A spokeswoman for Hostess says the change to extend the shelf life was actually made by the old company that went bankrupt.

But the old company went out of business and stopped production just weeks after that, meaning the Twinkies most people are familiar with had the shorter life span.

Hostess shuttered its factories last November after years of management turmoil and a failure to reach a contract agreement with its second biggest union. Twinkies and other Hostess cakes were purchased by Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co.