Robot Claw

Much like every other stripling, I had a healthy fear of chewing gum in my youth since I didn’t want it staying in my stomach for ten years (or however long the urban legend claimed). The only gum I chewed in those days came in trading card packs (then called ‘bubblegum cards’) or (usually in tiny pellet form) from the lolly machines at shops.

I used to think of chewing gum as an adult pastime – much like smoking – and never much understood it, only chewing until the taste was gone. Why would someone want to keep chewing such tasteless stuff? Unable to understand, I simply dismissed chewing gum as something not for me.

Those were the ‘big three’ in the 1980s in Australia – vintage examples no less – and while I don’t recall ever really buying it myself I can remember powdery sticks of Wrigley’s occasionally offered to my by someone who did. Since I was never one for spitting it out – much less sticking it somewhere – I’d always keep the little foil wrapper so I had something to put the gum into when I was done. There was another brand as well – Stimorol – but to me that was well into the ‘for grown ups’ camp, and I thought of it as a weirdly tasting lolly old guys consumed while they read the racing pages of the Sunday paper. Like Fisherman’s Friend.

And then, somewhere around maybe 1981 or 1982, bubblegum seemed to explode. All of a sudden every kid at school was chewing Hubba Bubba or Bubble Yum and blowing big ‘nonstick’ bubbles. Quickly we learned the more pieces you chewed the bigger the bubbles and had mouths full of the stuff! Schools banned it quickly of course, but that hardly stopped us. We’d smuggle packs into class, chew it surreptitiously, and put it in each other’s hair for laughs. As kids do.

Reading a bit about this now I learned that Hubba Bubba came to market in Australia in 1980 and that’s what triggered the ‘wars’. In the USA it was Bubble Yum vs Bubblelicious since Hubba Bubba had been retired (as a brand) even before their wars had began. My memory of gum exploding isn’t wrong either: the market increased more than tenfold between the late 70s and mid 80s, and bubblegum started being sold almost everywhere.

At first I was happy with the standard flavour since that’s all that was available, but a while later I got into orange Bubble Yum and swore it was best. And then Hubba Bubba released pineapple and I never looked back! I used to buy multiple packs at a time, and recall having a stash of a dozen or more packs secreted in a drawer in my bedside table (alongside the giant pile of Redskins). Even today I can almost recall the taste, although it’s been decades since I last bought a pack. Is pineapple even available any more? Is Hubba Bubba?

The bubblegum wars led to a massive increase in types of gum available. I remember Spurt (a type of gum with a liquid center), Big Tooth (a plastic tooth container full of gum), a dinosaur-head container with bone-shaped gum pellets, gum being added to ice creams (such as Bubble’O’Bill) and the various gums that came with tattoos, like the above type still sold in Australia today.

As with all fads, gum passed, although this was more due to increased awareness of the sugar content than kids losing interest. By the time sugar-free bubblegum turned up I had lost interest, moving on to a healthy obsession with chips, Mars bars and Polly Waffles. The rare times I bought gum was the occasional pack of Juicy Fruit since I craved the taste. I think Bernard still bought gum, as did some of my friends, but it was the chewing type and never bubblegum. I recall a brief flirtation with sherbet-filled fruit-shaped gum balls from machines, but even that didn’t seem to last long.

I almost never buy gum now, and only eat it when it comes with some sort of ‘candy toy’ I buy in Japan. After I started this post I became curious and picked up a pack of Juicy Fruit to see if it tasted the same. Imagine my surprise – and disappointment – to find the pellets are gone and it’s now a bland stick product without the wonderfully fruity taste. It has become a worthless thing; only fit for geezers dreaming of horses.

I’m sure gum will never die, but it may be that it’s long been dead to me. I’ve probably never really understood why anyone likes it, nor why it would be chosen over virtually any other candy lolly or snack. I suppose it’s just not my thing.

Do you chew gum? If so, why?