Blown To Bits

Something different to chew on today campers! Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins unearthed an  interesting bit o'Bazooka history last month over at eBay.  The item in question is not something I had really seen before and was known as Bazooka Bits:

I would have been all over these as a kid, since I loved little Chiclets style gum!  

The sale of tiny candy coated bits at Topps date back to the very early 1950's, when they introduced a product called Block Busters that was eventually discontinued, with their remaining supply boxed up along with a neat Topps Baseball Button in 1956:

If you look at the pack illustration, you can see the little gum bits are quite colorful:

That is a bit more modern version of Bazooka Joe adorning the pack than was gracing the comics at the time, as Joe's principal artist, Wesley Morse, had passed away several years prior to these being offered.  The commodity code indicates 1970, and while I thought 1980 was also possible when I first saw these scans, they definitely date to '70, for a simple reason I will get into shortly. Before we go there however, I think that version of Joe might have been done by the same artist who created this puzzle for the 1972 Big Bazooka Cards but I'm not 100% convinced:

That awesome piece of uncut goodness can be found, with a  LOT more Bazooka related stuff, over at the Bazooka Joe Comics site.

The bottom indicia is unexciting:

So how do we know it's 1970 and not 1980?  Because Topps was burning off excess stock in their 1972 Hallowe'en offerings:

(courtesy collectingcandy.com)

So did the product just not sell or did the folks over at Warner-Lambert (who had acquired original manufacturer American Chicle in 1962) that sold Chiclets intervene somehow due to their packaging?  Topps had tangled with them before (and resoundingly lost), so it's possible to my mind as this is a rare bit o'bubblegum history!

The Bits persisted for a couple more years, rebranded as Presto and Gumniks:

I never saw any of those either as a kid and I was on the lookout for this stuff! Our local ice cream truck carried a wide line of Topps products but not these.  They still look pretty tasty to me!

(UPDATE 7/18/22 - Friend o'the Archive Mark Newgarden advises these were spotted on Staten Island around the time of the original retail issue.)

Presto Change-o!

Every once in a while, something comes down the pike that still blows my doors off. I was just trolling the waters of eBay the other day when this bad boy popped up:

There was another one as well but it was more than triple the price of this one and not even as nice, so I BO'd this sucker and it arrived a short time ago.  It's about 9 inches in length and the straw is pretty thick  plastic. It's in solid enough shape I'm sure you could still use it to drink something if you were so inclined.

While it's a neat piece, I don't necessarily collect Topps pure candy and gum items but I bought it because of the contents, which I will get to momentarily. But first, a closer look at the label, which actually doesn't reveal much more:

There's no product code on it anywhere but I'd guess it's from around 1973-74 because I'm pretty sure this was leftover Block Buster gum from a failed attempt to resurrect that brand.  Take a closer look:

Block Buster debuted around 1951 or so and looks to have fizzled out as a stand alone retail product around 1955.  Topps then looks to have used leftover gum from this product in their 1956 Baseball Button issue as the "Candy Coated Bubble Gum' that came in the box with the Button. I'm sure it was cello-bagged as I've never seen a pin with any kind of residue and the box insides I've seen look clean as a whistle.

After bringing the Block Busters brand back in the early 70's, it appears Topps once again sold off excess gum in the Presto straw. I have more on Block Buster here if you want to know a little more.