Shazammed!

The early days of Bazooka and its comics were a mish-mash of suppliers, artists and licensed strips. However, I recently ran across an interesting premium issued by the Brock Company of Chattanooga that ties in a bit with the early Bazooka comics. Intrepid readers of this blog know that Bazooka originated as a candy created by Brock and that sometime between 1937 and 1947 Topps acquired the trademark, most likely after the end of the war, and applied it to their new bubble gum.

Close readers also know that Bazooka first used a comic strip called Bubbles when it launched in 1947 (Bazooka was manufactured by a Topps nom-de plume called Bubbles Inc.) . The strip was not especially well done nor was it all that funny:

Bubbles quickly gave way to some strips licensed from Fawcett Publications:

The 1947 copyright for Fawcett Publications puts it within the first year of Bazooka, which was a five cent product as Topps Gum filled the one cent niche at the time (Topps originally marketed separate products for each price point after the war, although this practice ended by 1949). I suspect Bubbles was only inserted in the initial wave of Bazooka issued in New York City that commenced April 23rd but I'm not 100% sure of that.  The Fawcett strips possibly came a couple months later when they started national distribution on July 21st; the above is what I believe is the third version of the Bazooka wrapper, which would feature small changes almost annually if not more frequently, but it may date from early 1948 while holding the 1947 Doc Sorebones.  Those comics were separate inserts and not printed on the backs of the wrappers by the way.

A year later though, at least one Fawcett character was featured on a premium issued by.....Brock Candy!

If you look at the 18 available subjects, they were not all Fawcett characters but rather from a variety of publishers dominated by Marvel/Timely. :

Some of the other booklets in the series have copyrights from 1949 and 1950 so the offer either occurred over a few years or began a couple years after 1948. In addition multiple firms utilized these mini comics to advertise but some others I've seen do not have the ordering details like Brock did or were entirely blank backed.

It's meaningless in the grand scheme of things but I like how a company connected to the history of Topps issued something also connected to Topps, albeit by the slimmest of threads.

Chattanooga Chew Chew

While I was researching my Modern Hobby Guide material two or three years ago, I found a funny thing.  There was a trademark registered by Bubbles Inc. (later assigned to Topps) for Bazooka that indicated the first appearance of this iconic bubble gum occurred on July 12, 1938.

That's an interesting date since it precedes the actual founding of Topps by about five months. I am also wondering if Bubbles Inc. preceded Topps as a company even though the July 1938 date likely refers to Brock's original trademarking of the name and/or logo (but not the soldier as the bazooka itself was not around until 1942) .The soldier and rocket launcher logo is interesting too as it not one seen anywhere else.  Further research led me to this entry:

This is additional information from the US Government database of Patents and Trademarks and it confirms the previous application was successful. First use on April 21, 1947 would have been locally in New York City; the July 23, 1947 date marks the first time it was used in Interstate commerce.

So far so good, we just have a mystery logo.  But a little more digging revealed this nugget:

Brock Candy (once briefly discussed here in connection with the trademark) was a fixture in the Chattanooga confectionery business at the time of this filing and that city figures prominently in the history of Topps as they bought another concern there called Bennett-Hubbard in 1943 and turned it into their southern plant before it was closed up in 1951. Chattanooga was also quite close to Fort Ogelthorpe, Georgia where Phil Shorin, a Topps founder, was stationed during World War 1 and would have been a prime recreational area when on leave from the base.

Bazooka as can be plainly seen, was used locally starting on January 4, 1937.  I can't find the one linking document (not all old records are digitized) but I suspect Topps bought the brand name at some point from Brock through Bubbles Inc. sometime in early 1947.  Brock was paying back a payroll loan at the time and I am thinking the brand was not in use after the war. I can't prove it but it makes a lot of sense and there is no way the Chattanooga connection is a coincidence, as there are no coincidences when it comes to the Shorin family and their businesses.

Since I was rooting around in the databases I searched out the record for Bazooka Joe and found this:

This dates Joe and the gang to August 1954, although BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd feels it was a few months earlier.

Bazooka Blunder

Everybody is familiar with the classic red, white and blue Bazooka packaging, at least those of you out there in the zeitgeist that read this blog but did you know Topps originally had a different design for Bazooka?

Topps applied for their first Bazooka trademark in April of 1947 but it was radically different than what ended up on the retail wrappers a couple of months later:

This belies the tale that the gum was named for a nonsensical musical instrument played by Bob Burns. In fact, the brand name Bazooka was originally trademarked in 1937 by a firm called the Brock Candy Company and it was for candy, not gum.  Brock Candy was based in Chattanooga, Tennessee and considering Phil Shorin's familiarity with this city from his army days and Topps' acquisition of another Chattanooga candy company called Bennett-Hubbard in 1943, I don't think Topps actually coined the name.  I cannot trace how it ended up with Topps but suspect Bennett-Hubbard bought Brock before being acquired by Topps.

Why Topps would obscure the true origins of Bazooka can only be guessed at but the logo above fit in well with their business at the time, which relied upon sales to the military for both PX's and field ration kits as part of their marketing plan. It's possible this logo didn't test well or was just used for PX's originally. The classic red, white and blue Bazooka livery follows a Shorin family tradition of using that patriotic color scheme going back to the 1920's but it came first in camoflauge.