Happy BIrthday!

As we celebrate the 250th Anniversary, or semiquincentennial, of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it seems a very appropriate time to detail a little-known-something about the Shorin family and what was a sustained, continued salute to the American flag and the country that took them in. Morris Shorin came to America in 1891 and became a cigarmaker in fairly short order.  By1908 he had either taken over the American Leaf Tobacco Company or created a new firm with that name (exactly which event presently unclear and the subject of ongoing research). His descendants indicate the name of the company, specifically the "American" part, was an intentional honorific. I've been searching for years but have found no surviving documents or ephemera from the ALTC (a matchbook cover would have been an obvious choice for the company) but given his and the family's later choice of colors to market their services and products, it's a pretty good bet the scheme would have been red, white and blue.

While Morris ran the ALTC, which primarily speculated in, what else, leaf tobacco, the Shorin family dabbled in real estate after the end of World War 1 but there was no branding for that particular venture; their transactions for the most part were conducted as private individuals and there was no marketing involved. Their real estate business eventually led, around 1925, to purchasing and leasing locations around Brooklyn for what turned into a pretty healthy chain of service stations in the borough (about 16 locations at its Depression era peak). These were branded, quite deliberately, as American Gas Stations.  Save for the primeval days of the company, this venture would be patriotically themed, as this early matchbook cover shows:

As the chain grew, the graphics improved and by the mid-Thirties this clever design was in widespread use:

If you look closely at the cover, the design incorporated an inspired Uncle Sam whose upper half was composed of the firms initials:

As the decade ended, Mobil ended up purchasing the chain and the Shorin family cast about for a new venture. As we know, they founded Topps Chewing Gum in 1938.  Their namesake gum came in a few flavors but peppermint was the big seller.  Once again, a patriotically themed graphic was used for their most popular chew:

World War 2 came of course, and Topps had to make do with sparse sugar rations and other restrictions. Postwar, they slightly changed the wrapper design for the Peppermint tab in 1946 but used the same colors:

The Shorin's did quite a bit to support the war effort and after the conflict ended, they developed a new confection in 1947 as raw manufacturing supplies slowly returned to normal. They named this product Bazooka Bubble Gum and of course, went with the same red, white and blue scheme, although the foil wrap they used made it a little less obvious. These were all nickel rolls at first and there were some slight differences in the early wrappers but they pretty much all looked like this:

In 1949 a penny version of Bazooka debuted, still with foil, still red, white and blue, still wonderful, still patriotic:

The one cent packs (or more properly, tabs) of Bazooka shed their foil first, in the early Fifties, although there were two varieties used, including this one, that's not all that well known:

Even the comics, once color replaced sepia, continued this scheme; see how they were printed alongside the iconic wrappers, which is why the colors were shared, although the comics had yellow added and sometimes had subtle hues as the technology advanced:

The outer display packaging continued the patriotic look, here's a mid Seventies sampling:

The Bazooka wrappers continue to be red, white and blue to this day, even though Topps no longer owns the brand.

Happy 250th birthday America!