1977 Ciao! June 8/3 The age bracket of its [sc. a bath house's] growing clientele runs from twinkies to late collegiate.

1983 P. Theroux Kingdom by Sea vii. 93 ‘'Ow mooch does your knapsack weigh?’ I said not much. They plumped it with their hands, and weighed it, and laughed, taking me for a twinkie.

1986 Nation (N.Y.) 8 Mar. 283/2 The ambitious twinkie who plans to float horizontally into the upper reaches of gay society.

2006 R. Everett Red Carpets & Other Banana Skins xxix. 230 George, an American lawyer who fell in love with France during the war and never left, entertained effeminate twinkies for lunch at his regular table.

1979 Newsweek 4 June 31/1 In what the press dubbed the ‘Twinkie defense’,..Blinder told the jury that White's compulsive diet of candy bars, cupcakes and Cokes was..a source of excessive sugar that had aggravated a chemical imbalance in his brain.

1981 Economist 6 June 46/2 This argument [sc. of severe depression] has..become known as ‘the Twinkie defence’ after the cream-filled cakes on which..Mr White subsisted.

1988 Washington Post 22 Dec. a25/6 He [sc. President Reagan] elevated irresponsibility to an art form. And now in the waning seconds he sadly and unsuccessfully invokes the Twinkies defense.

1989 Christian Sci. Monitor 18 May 13/4 Blaming the sun for making you kill a man is a lame excuse, on a par with the ‘Twinkie’ defense.