Little Debbie made 150 million Christmas Tree Cakes in one season. Salina311 reached out to find out how many land in Salina
Halloween is still more than a week away, but Christmas has already pulled into the Dillons store on Ohio Street in Salina.
A Little Debbie display shaped like a locomotive, with "Snackin' around the Christmas Tree" painted on its side, was stacked this week with Christmas Tree Cakes in vanilla and chocolate, Cherry Cordials and North Pole Nutty Buddy Wafer Bars. A "Holiday Snacks" sale tag priced select varieties at 2 for $6. Tucked onto the same display, Pumpkin Spice Oatmeal Creme Pies were on sale for $4.79, a last nod to fall.
A second display nearby held 8.9-ounce bags of Christmas Tree Cake Donuts above more boxes of Christmas Tree Cakes.
Salina311 reached out to Little Debbie maker McKee Foods and to Dillons and Walmart stores in Salina for information on the holiday snacks, including how well they sell locally.
Prices at Dillons on Ohio may not match other Salina stores.
What's new this year
Shoppers who think the donuts are new aren't far off. McKee Foods introduced Christmas Tree Cake Donuts in 2024, along with Christmas Mini Muffins, according to Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery. The donuts are mini yellow cake donuts with white frosting, red stripes and green sugar crystals, according to Little Debbie's website. McKee's 2026 release lists them as a returning favorite.
The two items that are new for 2026 are Hot Cocoa Mini Muffins and Big Pack Christmas Old Fashioned Donuts, according to a McKee Foods release dated Oct. 13, 2026.
The Hot Cocoa Mini Muffins have chocolate and "toasty marshmallow-flavored bits" and come in individual pouches, according to the release. The Big Pack donuts are cake-style donuts finished in a sweet glaze with red and green sprinkles.
The release also says two items are new to the single-serve lineup this year: Christmas Old Fashioned Donuts and Cosmic Brownies. They join single-serve Christmas Tree Cakes.
Neither of the two new items was on the displays at Dillons on Ohio this week.
The returning lineup includes Christmas Tree Cakes in vanilla and chocolate, Christmas Tree Brownies, North Pole Nutty Buddy Wafer Bars, Gingerbread Cookies, Christmas Cherry Cordials, Christmas Mini Muffins and Christmas Tree Cake Donuts, according to the release. The products are rolling out to grocery, mass merchandise and convenience stores nationwide from mid-October through mid-December.
The star of the show
The Christmas Tree Cake started it all. The cakes debuted in 1985 in a triangular shape with a chocolate trunk, according to Little Debbie's company history. The current scalloped shape was introduced in 2012.
McKee calls them the top-selling product in its holiday lineup. McKee produced 150 million of the cakes from October through December in one recent season and "still could barely keep up with demand," brand manager Kenny Hammontree told the Southern Foodways Alliance. The figure counts cakes produced, not sold.
McKee spokesman Mike Gloekler has previously said that cartons of the cakes sold "would stretch from Memphis to Mountain City six times."
The cake's fan base has reached the freezer aisle, too. Hudsonville Ice Cream's Christmas Tree Cake flavor, released in 2023, became "the bestselling pint in company history in a single week," Hammontree told the Southern Foodways Alliance.
McKee Foods, based in Collegedale, Tennessee, has annual sales of about $2 billion and about 6,400 employees, according to an Oct. 20, 2025, company release. Across all of its snack cakes, McKee led the center-store snack cake category with $545.2 million in tracked retail sales in the 52 weeks ending March 23, 2025, according to Circana data reported by Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery. No product-level sales figure for Christmas Tree Cakes was publicly available.
Shoppers in Salina can find the holiday lineup on Little Debbie's website, and Salina311 will update this story if McKee, Dillons or Walmart share local details.
