Whoever made this image/meme, God bless his soul!
Back in the 80s, I made hundreds (if not thousands) of visits to countless Toys R Us with my late father and (sometimes) brother. Sometimes we managed to go back with a toy in hand and sometimes we were not so successful to coax my father to part with his hard earned money to pay for our spoils. Regardless of the outcome, we'd pass through the checkout counter and we'd smell the many flavors of chewing gum neatly stacked next to the cashier. The one that my father would buy repeatedly was the Bazooka Bubble Gum. Naturally us kids got to chew on them too since there were an abundance of supply of the bubble gum. You see, this was my father's favorite brand of bubble gum to chew whenever the lot of us go on long road trips. Those long drives were often accompanied by the smell of bubble gum chewed by members of the family, although I can't recall if my mother used to join in as well.
We preferred the 'Original' flavor, although there were "Strawberry Shake", Cherry Berry", "Watermelon Whirl" and my favorite next to the original, "Grape Rage". What's cool is that each of the individual bubble gum bar came with its own comic strips, with its own character, Bazooka Joe, at the back of the wrapper. I could have sworn that there were no repeats and it was always a different comic strip for every gum piece that I opened. Exchanging of the Bazooka Joe comic strips between family members was a must and we would have enjoyed multiple stories at one go. I would usually chew a few bars at one go so I would end up with 2 or 3 comic strips at a time. Don't even let me start with the wonderful smell. That instantly recognizable Bazooka Bubble Gum smell. The nostalgia!
I even remember that my father at one time bought a whole box of the bubble gum! Man we had a blast then. For the love of God I should have kept the box or at least some of the comic strip/wrappers.
This was how I remember the box being openly sold at Toys R Us
Here's a couple of TV commercials from the 80s and 1990 (2nd video) that I usually see on Saturday mornings, at the time mostly during commercial breaks during Nickelodeon's Double Dare game show slot or in between the morning cartoon shows.
In 2012, I found out that the Bazooka Candy Brands, which is own by the Topps cards company, announced they would no longer include the Bazooka Joe comics, but instead they provided brain-teasers at the back of the wrappers in an attempt to upgrade and modernize the brand. There goes my childhood memories.
Sometime in the 90s, I would even venture into the Big League Chew bubble gum brand, even after my father's passing, just to reignite my interest towards the whole bubble gum experience, to no avail. Big League Chew was rather tasty too but it wasn't just the same.
I never really got into Big League Chew and the phase quickly passed. Maybe it's because of the memories I had with my old man or the scrumptious sheer smell of the Bazooka brand. I had an awesome 80s to say the least, some of it I owe to the awesome brand of bubble gum, the Bazooka Bubble Gum!
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