History
It was first marketed shortly after World War II in the U.S. by the Topps Company of Brooklyn, New York. The gum was packaged in a patriotic red, white, and blue color scheme. Beginning in 1953, Topps changed the packaging to include small comic strips with the gum, featuring the character "Bazooka Joe". There are 50 different "Bazooka Joe" comic-strip wrappers to collect. Also on the comic strip is an offer for a premium and a fortune. Older Bazooka comic strips were larger in size, and older strips are no longer available. The product has been virtually unchanged in over 50 years.
The Topps company expanded the flavors, making them Original, Strawberry Shake, Cherry Berry, Watermelon Whirl, and Grape Rage. The Strawberry flavor is packaged in a pink and white wrapper and the Grape in a purple and white wrapper. Bazooka gum can also be found in a sugar free variety with the standard bubble gum flavor and a "Flavor Blasts" variety, claimed to have longer lasting, more intense taste. Bazooka gum comes in 2 different sizes.
Bazooka bubblegum is sold in many countries, often with Bazooka Joe comic strips translated into the local language. Bazooka gum is sold in Canada with cartoons in both English and French, depending upon the city. In Israel, manufactured under license to Elite, the cartoons are written in Hebrew.
In May 2009 it was announced that the Bazooka Joe comic was to be adapted into a Hollywood movie.
Read more about this topic: Bazooka (chewing Gum)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)