My interest in gum didn’t abate, so I went and bought some types currently on the market! Let’s see what I thought…
These gum balls cost $0.15 each at a local candy store. The first was just a standard bubblegum ball printed as a baseball, and was forgettable both in texture and taste. The second was coated with a sour chemical so strong and unpleasant I couldn’t leave it in my mouth for more than a few seconds, so I didn’t even get to evaluate the gum! The one at the bottom was ‘colour changing’ since the dye coloured your tongue. It worked fairly well, but the gumball was so incredibly rigid I gave up trying to bite it lest I broke a tooth. It felt like trying to bite a marble!
Razzles are candies that initially have the taste and feel of a plain sugar tab (like a PEZ) but after a short while turn into gum, possibly via some chemical reaction with saliva. They’re evil in taste and texture, and give me the distinct feeling I’m eating something not safe for humans. Strongly not recommended.
‘Dubble Bubble’ looks like a musk stick before you eat it, and initially feels too hard for gum. With some persistence (and jaw pain) you can chew it enough to release a strongly sweet flavour that, while acceptable, is fleeting. Bazooka – a timeless classic – is similar, and I doubt the formulation has changed in decades. And yes, if you look closely you’ll see Bazooka still comes with the little comics.
As you can see I bought many pieces just to see the comics, and in the seven I opened no comic repeated. I didn’t enter the code at the website; I wonder what happens when you do?
Moving onto a more traditional pack of gum, here’s original flavor Hubba Bubba ‘Max’. I bought this since I misunderstood the picture on the wrapper to suggest a fluid center, but as you can see it’s just a piece of gum with a different coloured piece in the middle. The taste was ok as a sugar delivery device, but I found the gum extremely rubbery and unpleasant to chew. I’d never eat this again.
Bubblicious was the brand we never had in Oz back in my youth, and for a time was one of the market leaders here. Foolishly I chose watermelon (from several options) but this just tasted of chemicals and nothing like any watermelon I’ve ever eaten. The gum had a strange powdery feel to it as well, but perhaps that was because I didn’t keep it in my mouth long enough for it to get elastic.
This Bubble Yum was the worst I tried by a wide margin. As everyone knows I like fairy floss, but this tasted nothing like it and a great deal like marshmallow to me. I found it repulsive, and spat it out in moments. The rest of these will go to my students 🙂
And so we end with this unusual find: Juicy Fruit bubblegum. To my surprise it was fairly good! In fact this tasted a lot more like my memory of Juicy Fruit than the gum I bought a few weeks ago, and it wasn’t as hard and rubbery as all the others in this post. I even blew a bubble! I’d never buy or eat it again, but I’d say this is the only one I found somewhat enjoyable 🙂