Review: Hostess Peeps Cupcakes Are A Simple, Fun Twist On A Classic Treat

Easter may well be the number-one holiday for sweet treats. Among the best Easter candies for your basket are some top-tier sweets, including Whoppers Mini Robin Eggs, Lindt Chocolate Carrots, and Cadbury Creme Eggs. More controversial are Peeps. Some hate them, while New Jersey happens to be the unexpected state that loves Peeps the most. That said, there's nothing inherently weird about sugar-coated marshmallow — rather, it's the texture that puts off many to an otherwise reasonable combination of ingredients.

In what might be a move that gets even the haters to appreciate the unique concept behind the critter-shaped candies, Hostess teamed up with the Peeps brand for a new take on its cupcakes. I picked up a box of Hostess Peeps Cupcakes to try them myself. Ahead is a breakdown of the packaged snack, before my personal review and thoughts on the item after trying it myself.

I purchased a box of Hostess Peeps Cupcakes from my local Walmart in the suburbs of Las Vegas. I tried two of the cakes in total — one I had already cut in half for a photo, so I had a second one whole to ensure I tried at least one unaltered.

From the two Hostess Peeps Cupcakes I ate, I had nibbles of each component in isolation to better understand its contribution. I ate the second one exactly as I would have if I were snacking on it for my own personal enjoyment, albeit with more critical thought than usual. Important to my analysis was how the treats worked as a dessert in and of themselves, in addition to how they fit alongside similar items, including Peeps and standard Hostess Cupcakes. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own.

Each Peeps Cupcake resembles a regular Hostess Cupcake in form, but with alterations to the core ingredients that make up the standard treat. First off, the snacks have a layer of yellow icing, rather than the traditional chocolate brown. While the white squiggle looping across the icing is the same, the sweet also features a smattering of coarse sugar on top, seemingly intended to replicate the saccharine coating on the outer layer of Peeps.

Meanwhile, each treat is comprised of yellow cake instead of chocolate. That's consistent with Golden Cupcakes and even past seasonal items like Key Lime Cupcakes, which were among three limited-edition flavors Hostess introduced for the summer of 2021. Finally, the typical creamy center is replaced by a marshmallow-flavored filling. Each snack cake is 160 calories. It contains 5 grams of fat — 2.5 of which are saturated fat — and 22 grams of sugar. A box contains eight packaged treats in total.

At the time of their release in the second half of February 2026, Peeps Cupcakes seem to have only hit the shelves of Walmart stores. They are currently not available at other grocery store chains that regularly supply standard Hostess products. I checked the store locator for several major U.S. cities in addition to my Las Vegas home, and the Hostess website returned no results other than Walmart.

My local supercenter currently sells a box of the treats for $3.48. As best I can tell, that price is consistent at most, if not all, locations. When I was at my Walmart to purchase them, an employee had to alert me to the fact that the Peeps Cupcakes were not located beside the year-round Hostess products but on a separate display alongside other seasonal Easter confections. The snack cakes are only available for a limited time, with no specific end date set by the brand. Of course, expect them to last through Easter 2026 at minimum.

Initially, I found that my first Hostess Peeps Cupcake did not make a strong impression. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing — I found it a satisfying dessert, on par with other Hostess products I'd had in the past. Still, I didn't find it particularly better or worse than a baseline level of quality. What moved the needle over time was the marshmallow filling. The more of the treat I ate, the more that the marshmallow filling became its defining characteristic.

For what it's worth, what did not end up mattering over time were the yellow frosting or the sugar crystals on top. I had a few nibbles of the frosting on its own, and it tasted like standard frosting, with nothing more than sugar defining its flavor. The coarse sugar really just gave it an ever-so-slightly distinct texture, which was certainly fun in theory. But if I weren't intentionally analyzing the cupcakes, there's a good chance I would have failed to notice the sugar crystals whatsoever.

Finally, the yellow cake tasted identical to what's used in classic Twinkies. As a chocolate connoisseur, my personal preference would be for the standard chocolate cake, but there's nothing inherently better or worse about the Hostess yellow cake. That all added up to a perfectly satisfactory dessert. On top of those elements, the filling was texturally gooey and rich with a marshmallow flavor that made up the treat's sole standout quality. Eventually, it left a lingering marshmallow aftertaste that I particularly enjoyed.

I wouldn't necessarily urge anyone to rush to their nearest Walmart and pick up a box of Peeps Cupcakes. That's simply because I enjoyed them on a level not necessarily beneath but just about equivalent to most other Hostess products. My personal preference is for Chocodiles, which once disappeared for more than 15 years, but these snack cakes aren't too far behind. In other words, I don't think this dessert is exceedingly special, but it's tasty all the same.

With that said, connoisseurs of marshmallow flavor and Peeps fanatics will absolutely find this sweet rendition satisfying. Even avowed Peeps haters might want to give the cupcakes a shot, because they deliver on the sugarier-than-normal marshmallow experience without the polarizing texture. Typically, brand collaborations are bold — for example, Dairy Queen's Girl Scout Thin Mints Blizzard Treat Cake, which topped Mashed's list of Girl Scout cookie snack collabs — so I was a little surprised by the extent to which Peeps Cupcakes played it safe. In this case, safe was mostly a good thing, because it's hard to imagine anyone truly disappointed by this treat. So, expect something simple but effective, and seek out Hostess Peeps Cupcakes if such a collaboration sounds appealing.