Bubble gum has a long and varied history, with several different flavors and concepts
being marketed over the years.
Unfortunately, some of them are gone forever.
So let’s check out 10 discontinued bubble gums you’ll never chew again!
Slush Puppie Bubble Gum
Slush Puppie can always be counted on to save the day when temperatures begin climbing in
the summer months.
There’s really nothing as refreshing as an ice-cold slush, and Slush Puppie has been
dominating the field since the 1970s.
In the 1980s, the brand decided to step outside its comfort zone and try its hand in the realm
of bubble gum.
This risk didn’t necessarily have the effect that they were hoping for, but the gum was
still decently well received.
Slush Puppie Bubble gum came in packages containing five bubble gum chunks in assorted flavors.
Not to stray too far off-brand, the flavors were the same as those of their famous slushies:
cherry, grape, lemon-lime, blue raspberry and orange.
In keeping with the theme, the pieces were shaped like paw prints.
This bubble gum was, unfortunately, quite short lived.
Today, there isn’t even much evidence left of its existence – just a couple nostalgic
mentions of it in deep, dark corners of the Internet.
It’s too bad that this business venture didn’t quite work out, but Slush Puppie
is still killing the slush game, so it clearly wasn’t too much of a loss for them.
In a world filled with hundreds of options for fruit flavored gums, consumers still have
a lot of options very similar to this one, but it was fun to see the familiar face of
the Slush Puppie mascot in a different setting.
Adams Sour Bubble Gum
In a world overflowing with sweet, fruity gum, Adams Sour would be a refreshing change
of pace.
Too bad it’s a thing of the past.
This sour gum was a hit in the sixties and seventies, with flavors including apple, strawberry,
lemon and orange.
The gum came wrapped in a package which contained five sticks, in just one of the aforementioned
flavors.
Sour candy definitely isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but the gum still had a pretty
strong following.
Although, to be fair, people have claimed that, by today’s standards, this candy wasn’t
actually all that sour.
But back in the day this candy was considered one that would make your mouth pucker.
In fact, sour candies are a recent trend, so this gum was really ahead of the curve.
Sour candy being unusual at the time might have been a contributing factor to this gum’s
downfall.
Odds are it would have been a hit if it had been introduced in the nineties or 2000s.
Timing really is everything.
You may not know this, but Adams is the gum that started it all.
It was the first gum to be commercially produced in the United States, and dates back to the
late nineteenth century.
Adams Sour gum was one of their many beloved flavors to be discontinued over the years,
but the company has a habit of bringing back old favorites every once in a while, so all
hope is not lost.
Topps Bubble Gum Juice Cartons
Fruit juice and kids go hand in hand.
In any given elementary school cafeteria, you’ll find a juice box in nearly every
lunch pail.
This was especially true in the eighties, when parents weren’t as worried about the
sugar content and viewed juice as a way for their kids to get in an extra serving of fruit.
What do bubble gum and juice have to do with each other besides the fact that they’re
loved by kids everywhere?
The thing that tied these two seemingly unrelated food items together was their flavor.
More often than not, bubble gum is flavored to taste like fruit.
And so, the Topps’ bubble gum brainchild was born.
Packaged in boxes shaped like juice cartons, this gum came in all the classic juice flavors:
grape, orange and apple.
Eventually, more creative flavors like Pink Lemonade, Tropical Punch and Strawberry Shake
joined the ranks as well.
Granted, we have our reservations when it comes to apple juice gum, but everything else
sounds pretty awesome.
The pieces were shaped like rock candy and came in various shapes and sizes.
This seems like one of those candies where the taste is second to the presentation.
You know kids were buying these not because they were the best gum out there, but because
the packaging was just that good.
Skittles Bubble Gum
For a brief, but glorious two-year period, Wrigley’s produced Skittles Bubble Gum,
a gum inspired by one of the most popular candies of all time.
After the original Skittles Bubble Gum was discontinued, they tried again with Extreme
Fruit Skittles Bubble Gum, which didn’t last very long either.
There was never really any explanation as to why they couldn’t make Skittles Bubble
Gum work – although, they had such a short lifespan that an explanation probably wasn’t
necessary; it’s likely most people never even noticed that they existed.
When you think about it, Skittles themselves are already kind of chewy...so maybe there
just wasn’t enough of a difference between the gum and the original candy.
The pieces of gum were even the same shape as the classic candies and only slightly larger
- just by looking at them they're hard to tell apart!
Or maybe the gum was just...bad.
We’ll likely never know the truth.
This bubble gum came wrapped in a rectangular prism, with each piece being a square chunk.
Each package was a mixed bag of flavors, so there was no need to worry about choosing
between your favorite Skittles flavors.
If this gum tasted anything like Skittles, it probably would have been amazing.
Skittles are one of the best candies out there, so it’s kind of sad that we might never
get to taste their bubble gum counterparts.
Chu-Bops
This is another bubble gum brand with a sick marketing scheme.
Each piece of Chu-Bops bubble gum was shaped like an LP record and, instead of being wrapped
in a traditional gum wrapper, came inside of a mini record sleeve.
This gum was introduced in 1980, when records were mainstream, and definitely would have
appealed to many music-crazed teenagers and young adults.
To top it all off, each piece of gum was wrapped to look like the album of a certain popular
artist of the day.
Seeing your favorite band on a gum wrapper can definitely act as an incentive for you
to buy it.
There were nine series released dedicated to uber popular artists, such as the Rolling
Stones, Elvis Presley and The Beatles.
The latter group actually had sixteen Chu-Bops dedicated to promoting them!
Marketing for the gum encouraged fans to try and collect all the albums in each series,
which is a great motivator to get people to buy the gum.
It was often sold at record stores, which would definitely target the right clientele.
In many stores, they even had their own section dedicated to them at the cash!
Chu-Bops are starting to sound more like collectables than candy.
The gum itself was regular old bubble gum: pink and not very long lasting.
Probably not the best, probably not the worst.
Records have made a bit of a resurgence lately, so if there was ever a time to revive Chu-Bops,
it’s now.
Gatorgum
Unlike many of the other gums discussed, Gatorgum was actually around for a significant amount
of time.
Developed in the seventies, this Gatorade-inspired bubble gum was available into the early 2000s.
Just like Gatorade, this gum was marketed as being ideal for helping people to quench
their thirst.
Seems like a weird selling-point for a gum, but, hey, whatever works.
Each package contained five sticks, and it could be purchased in a whopping two flavors.
It came in the two original Gatorade flavors: lemon-lime and orange.
Those are pretty niche flavors, and, to be perfectly honest, quite unconventional for
bubble gum, but considering it had a run of about thirty years, they must have been doing
something right.
This is one of those discontinued food items that people get really nostalgic over.
Since it was around for so long, it was able to impact a lot of people.
Mention it to anyone who was growing up between the years of 1980 and 2000, and their eyes
will probably light up as they reminisce about a long-forgotten part of their past.
This gum may be missed, but at least we’ve still got the actual Gatorade drink around
to keep us hydrated.
To be fair, it’s probably better that we’re back to relying on actual fluids to quench
our thirst instead of trying to satisfy that need with a stick of gum.
Black Cat Bubble Gum
Some of you will be heartbroken that you never got the chance to try this gum.
The rest of you will be thanking your lucky stars that it has been erased from existence.
No gum could possibly be more polarizing than Black Cat Bubble Gum, which is none other
than a black licorice-flavored bubble gum.
People have very strong feelings about black licorice.
It’s actually a bit alarming.
Black Cat Bubble Gum was released sometime in the seventies and stood out from the crowd
of pink bubble gums thanks to its pitch-black coloration.
Its yellow wrapper depicted the mascot black cat, and often included a small comic on the
inside.
This gum is remembered as being one of the best bubble-blowing gums ever.
It’s no secret that bubble gum often doesn’t really deliver.
Sometimes the flavor is decent, but you can’t blow a bubble if your life depended on it.
That wasn’t the case with Black Cat Bubble Gum.
You could blow bubbles for days, and massive ones, not those wimpy little ones that instantly
pop.
On the downside, however, this gum was also ridiculously sticky, and the bigger the bubble,
the higher the chances of it bursting and ending up in your hair.
Several people can recall horror stories from their youth of having to cut out chunks of
their hair after a mishap with this very gum.
But it was a chance many were willing to take.
Several other flavors of gum were subsequently released in this series, including Yellow
Cat (lemon), Red Cat (cinnamon) and Purple Cat (grape), but Black Cat’s licorice gum
is definitely the most interesting of the group.
Coca-Cola Gum
Once upon a time, Coca-Cola dabbled in the bubble gum game.
This was way back in the early 1900’s, when they released Coca-Cola bubble gum, which
was purchased by the Franklin Manufacturing Company and rebranded as Coca-Cola Pepsin
Gum.
This classic peppermint gum was said to help with digestion.
We’re not sure about the scientific value of that statement, but, since it was the early
1900’s, we’ll give them a pass.
This gum is so old, that its packaging was quite different from that of any of the other
entries on this list.
Instead of coming wrapped in paper or plastic, this gum was sold out of small glass jars
that had the Coca-Cola logo emblazoned on them.
We should probably go back to that, since it’s definitely infinitely better for the
environment than individually wrapped pieces.
Anyways, these glass containers are incredibly rare and considered to be quite valuable today.
On eBay, the lid of one of these jars is listed at a prince of fifty dollars, whereas a complete
jar can go for almost four hundred dollars!
So, if you ever stumble across one, consider yourself lucky.
Since this was one of the earliest gums to be produced, it probably wasn’t the greatest,
but it would be cool to try it all the same.
Talk about a literal taste of history.
With all this talk about Coca-Cola gum, you can’t help but wonder what an actual Coca-Cola
flavored gum would taste like...they should definitely get on that.
Domino’s Pizza Bubble Gum
In the spirit of discussing gum’s in which the concepts so cool that the flavor doesn’t
matter, we can’t ignore Domino’s Pizza Bubble Gum.
This bubble gum came packaged in a miniature replica of a Domino’s take-out pizza box.
Seriously, the design is spot on.
The gum itself is pre-cut into wedges, just like a pizza would be!
If you’re worried that this gum was cheese and pepperoni flavored, don’t be!
It’s regular old fruit bubble gum.
Although they never specified exactly which fruit.
It’s vague but provides the necessary reassurance for anyone who might have been concerned that
they were getting pizza gum.
Actually, pizza flavored gum sounds like something straight out of Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory.
It’s an awesome concept but would probably fail in execution.
Though it was popular throughout the eighties and early nineties, today, this gum exists
only in collectible form.
It definitely doesn’t go for as much as the Coca-Cola Pepsin jars, but these tiny
pizza box packages are listed for sale all over the Internet.
Some people are opposed to the very idea of this gum, claiming fruit and pizza shouldn’t
mix.
These are the same people who get overly-outraged at the mention of Hawaiian pizza.
If you could get past the idea that this was a fruit flavored candy in pizza form, you
would find the pleasant fruitiness of the gum to be quite enjoyable.
And regardless of your feelings towards the gum itself, you have to admit that the amount
of detail that went into the packaging is pretty impressive.
Ice Cream Flavored Gum
In the seventies, Adams, one of the founding bubble gum companies, had the genius idea
of combining one of the world’s most popular candies, gum, with one of the world’s most
popular desserts: ice cream.
This gum was available in the trifecta of ice cream flavors: chocolate, vanilla and
strawberry.
The idea of chocolate or vanilla gum was already an unusual one, but Adams didn’t do themselves
any favors by making the gum’s mascot a clown.
Stephen King might not have written IT yet, but clowns have always been a source of great
terror.
It was an innovative concept, but it didn’t really have the draw they hoped it would,
which ultimately lead this gum to be discontinued.
Even though it didn’t become the next big thing, there are a lot of people who look
back fondly on their memories of chewing ice cream bubble gum.
Although, it’s weird enough that many people had actually convinced themselves that it
was nothing more than a figment of their imagination, until encountering people discussing it on
online forums.
In several posts, people mentioning using their allowance to purchase themselves a package
each week in the seventies.
Unfortunately, kids today won’t know what it’s like to buy this Ice Cream flavored
gum, as it disappeared from shelves long ago.
But it’s not the end of the world, as when one strange or funky candy is discontinued,
it’s not long before another takes its place.
We’re definitely not lacking in whacky gum flavors today.
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