bazooka joe

September 6, 2003 6:24 PM

bazooka joe comics
posted by crunchland (15 comments total)

When I was in elementary school, I was a budding entrepreneur. I'd buy 100 pieces of bubble gum for $1, and sell each piece to my school mates for 2¢ each. With $2 that evening, I'd buy 200 pieces and repeat the process. Unfortunately, I didn't understand the concept of market saturation, and usually all my profits ended up being in bubble gum that I couldn't sell.
posted by crunchland at 6:27 PM on September 6, 2003

Crunch, you should've saved the comics (not the gum, man, that stuff was like cement when it was fresh!) and now you'd have a valuable collection of rare cultural icons... except for the ones Topps just published on the web, they're worthless now. (/just kidding)
posted by wendell at 6:39 PM on September 6, 2003

bazooka joe's sassy reverse mullet, edgy eye patch and side-splitting antics sure made for some quality chew time.
posted by quonsar at 7:01 PM on September 6, 2003

it really was like cement...and the comics were vastly more entertaining as a 7-year-old, and to our parents when they were 7, and to 7-year-olds today,etc...

thanks crunch!
posted by amberglow at 7:34 PM on September 6, 2003

When I was in elementary school,

I did 'that' in Jr. high. $0.10 a bubbleish cube.

It got 'so bad' the school dist. banned gun sales by sudents due to class disruption. I was the sales leader, pulling in $10 a class period.
posted by rough ashlar at 8:41 PM on September 6, 2003

Bazooka Joe... not to be confused with Joe Palooka (whose statue can be seen in limestone quarry country—Oolitic, Indiana).
posted by Zurishaddai at 8:45 PM on September 6, 2003

the school dist. banned gun sales

I should hope so.
posted by PrinceValium at 9:35 PM on September 6, 2003

Ouch! My teeth ache just looking at that page.

/Too much bubble gum as a youth. Mr. Cappy
posted by HTuttle at 11:34 PM on September 6, 2003

crunchland, you should've applied for a government subsidy. Probably would have built you a nice warehouse to store your strategic reserves.
posted by HTuttle at 11:38 PM on September 6, 2003

Yeah, cement that loses it's gum flavor after just 12 chew rotations.

Pthew!
posted by Fofer at 2:49 AM on September 7, 2003

This gum was manufactured by O-Pee-Chee in London, Ontario when I was a kid. I remember the smell of steamy, hot summer mornings: Labatt's (malt and hops), McCormicks (cookies), and O-Pee-Chee (bubble gum).
posted by 327.ca at 7:40 AM on September 7, 2003

Ah, companies coming up with great gimmicks to make kids want to buy their horrible candy.. there's nothing like the magic made by the marriage of children and capitalism.

And in this category, I'd include Popeye Cigarettes. I think they were really chalk. Yuck!
posted by orange swan at 7:49 AM on September 7, 2003

I think you guys are being way too hard on this gum.

Granted, if you were weaned on the softer Bubble Yum kind of bubblegum, Bazooka would probably be completely intolerable, I guess. When I was a kid, those horrible wax lips were a viable candy option. (I think back on it now and think "WAX?!") The truly hateful kind of gum that I remember were the thin square slabs you got with the baseball cards.

As far as Bazooka goes, I remember saving enough up to buy one of the "prizes." Looking at this gallery, it appears there were only 4 or 5 prizes to choose from. And as far as the comics go, I recall that my friends and I were more interested in the fortune than the comic.
posted by crunchland at 9:48 AM on September 7, 2003

Growing up in a rural village in Wales in the 1970s, I'd buy these at the village shop, and would have no idea what was going on in the comics. They may as well have been from another planet. (Thanks, Crunchland!)
posted by carter at 10:01 AM on September 7, 2003

I'm with you Carter. Bazooka Joe comics came across as some utterly inexplicable transatlantic zen koan designed to fuck with kids brains. I don't remember ever understanding a single one, and I think I ended up buying the stuff in the vain hope that I would somehow solve the riddle. also, I suspect that the voyage over to the UK doubled the original density of the gum
posted by gravelshoes at 10:52 AM on September 7, 2003