BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: C-flat
Date: 12 Oct 02 - 04:42 AM

I think those rice-paper sherbert sweets were called U.F.O.s, Alison.
As you say, Fizz Bombs came a little later and were the fore-runner of "Space-Dust". Made by the same company (Somportex), Space Dust came on the scene in the seventies and was a massive hit here.
I was at this time a budding, young entrepenuer (think Rodney, in fools and horses). My business partner (Del Boy) and I noticed how Somportex seemed to be launching their new "Space Dust" product on a regional basis and, being up in the North-East, we knew they would take a while to get to us, so we went and hired a truck, drove South and bought up all the wholesalers stock.
By the time Somportex got to our neck of the woods we had shipped many truckloads into the shops and the craze was all but over.If I never saw another packet of Space Dust it would be too soon!

For the benefit of our American friends I should explain that "Del-boy" and "Rodney" were two characters in a British comedy show called "Only Fools And Horses". A show about a hapless entrepenuer/con-man and his dim-witted brother.

The mention of Midget Gems and Dolly Mixtures, reminds me of the high shelves in the sweet shops, where the rows of glass jars lived.
Cough-Candy-Twist(meant to be medicinal?) and Apple Tarts (Soooo tart my face crumples at the thought) I can taste them now!

My business partner and I, spurred by our success with "Space Dust", decided to open a pick-and-mix sweet shop and use the new-found wholesale contacts to supply us with stock.
Given that most of our previous business dealings involved job-lots of seconds (imperfect stock) or bankrupt clearances bought at stock auctions, it was something of a surprise to our friends that we were "going legitimate".
One such friend visited the shop on our first day of trading, to wish us luck. Helping himself to a wrapped mint humbug from the display, "Well at least these can't be seconds!"
As he unwrapped the humbug he noticed that the stripes were only on the wrapper!
The shame of it!

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: alison
Date: 10 Oct 02 - 10:23 PM

ohhhhh... dolly mixtures and midget gems!!!

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 10 Oct 02 - 10:20 PM

I'm glad to see our British and Oz friends are keeping this going. For us Amuricans, I'll add BB bats (cost a penny, came in kinda chocolat and kinda vanilla flavors) Mason Dots, Black Crows and Ju-Jubes. Mason Dots were a variety of colors and flavors... like gum drops. Black Crows was just the black, licorice ones, and Ju-jubes were tough little candies that got stuck to your teeth.. only bought in weak moments. Along the same lines, Jujy fruits were softer and tasted a lot better.

Dixie cups, anyone?...

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: alison
Date: 10 Oct 02 - 09:32 PM

Belfast sweet shop time..... mum used to give us a penny each as she went off to work and we'd head for the corner shop and come back with bag fulls of sweets...

I remember, fruit salads, black jacks, sherbert dabs, jelly snakes, parma violets, bazooka joes, sweetie cigarettes, spangles, pink panther (pink) chocolate!!.....

but what was the name of the little flattened circles of sweetened paper, that had sherbert inside?? was it space ships??? UFOs??

I know this is a little later... but does anyone else remember fizz bombs?..... sort of like gob stoppers but with added "blow your head off" fizz.......

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Oct 02 - 08:47 PM

I remember a licorice bar, Choo-choo Bars, they were packaged in a pale blue wrapper with a picture of a train......if you ever made it to the end of one (they took forever to finish) your mouth and tongue and hands and clothes had changed to a strange blue-black........I don't even know if they are still around. (that's in Oz)

Cheers

JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Leadfingers
Date: 10 Oct 02 - 07:54 PM

Popcorn,Chewing Gum,Peanuts and Bubble gum
Pepsicola ,ginger beer and Canada Dry
Och Daddy how we miss Nigger Balls and Liquorice
Coca cola,something else and Eskimo Pie

Good old Jeremy Taylor and some South African memories.

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: X
Date: 10 Oct 02 - 07:40 PM

jimmyt:

Is that why the ADS or the ADA once owned "Sugar Daddies?"

Thanks Kim C:

I'm om my way to the Vermount Country Store!

Hugh

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 09 Oct 02 - 11:36 PM

My kids used to like Lik-M-Stix... I couldn't figure it out... I thought the sweetness was ephemeral... perhaps it always is.. I haven't seen them or pixy stix around in a long time... not that I've actively searched for them...

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Kim C
Date: 09 Oct 02 - 07:18 PM

Sorcha beat me to it on the Vermont Country Store. And by the way, Banjoest, I believe they have Chocolate Babies! I don't remember their web address offhand but if you seek, you will easily find. :-)

I remember Lik-M-Stix. An awful sugary stick you dipped into this pixie dust-type stuff, like they used to have in Pixy Stix. Say, do they still make Pixy Stix? I don't eat that stuff anymore.

Mister is a pretty steady sort of guy. He still likes candy corn and chocolate bars. Personally I like those little candy corn pumpkin things.

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: C-flat
Date: 08 Oct 02 - 07:44 PM

We used to have a local "pop" factory called Lowcocks that supplied all the shops in the area. Their bottles were beautiful, half frosted glass with the name embossed and a large rubber stopper which made a delicious squeaking sound when you pulled it out.
There was tuppence refund on a returned empty and we used to get paid in empties for running errands in the neighbourhood.
One local shopkeeper was a little careless in his storage of empties and we were able to make a fast profit by taking bottles in for refund and then running round to the yard at the rear, where the crates of empties were stored, and repeating the proceedure for as many times as you dared.

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: jimmyt
Date: 08 Oct 02 - 02:28 PM

Jerry and others, When I was in Dental School, we were taught that sometimes the best and only way of removing a crown that was stuck on was to heat a sugardaddy or black cow in some water, have the patient bite into it, then open their mouth rteal fast. Slick job! 10 years later some dentist's kid in highschool package a material that did the same thing, but for a specic use (removing stuck crowns and bridges) and became a millionaire on the patent! go figure!

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 06:32 PM

Is it as good as Grandpa Graff's? ... another old soda that is still around, at least in the Midwest.. they just make root beer, orange and creme soda, I think. I wonder if anyone ever drank Moxie? I've heard about it in literature and movies, off and on, but have never tasted it... have to buy a bottle... they sell it in the local supermarkets, here.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 06:20 PM

There was (and still is) a great pop made in Paris.......Kentucky. The supplied area is limited but it has a truly unique taste, noy quite ginger ale or 7-up or creme soda or.........Well to be truthful, the taste is just plain different. If you love it, you love it. It's called Ale-8-One...say it fast. Fantastic pop and I always pick up a case when I can.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 05:30 PM

For candy bars, I guess we haven't mentioned O'Henry, Three Musketeers
Mars and Almond Joy. Toss a few milk duds into the bag, while you're at it.

Glad to see the Brits chipping in, here. I suspect that there were very few candy bars and penny candies that were on both sides of the ocean..

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Sorcha
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 04:23 PM

In the US, you can still order a lot of this stuff from Vermont Country Store. What about Pez and dispensers? They're back now. Used to be a place here I could get those licorice pipes, but they went out of business.

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Sonnet
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 04:10 PM

I loved Parma violets! Can you remember violet creams? I remember one Christmas buying my Grandad liquorice in a box that consisted of a liquorice pipe etc that was called a 'smoker's outfit.' How about Lucky Numbers, which were something similar to Quality Street or Roses? All the wrappers had numbers on. Was 27 the 'pink stuff and toffee' roll? I was probably brought up on Ben Shaw's pop. My favourites were dandelion and burdock and yellow lemonade, which was supposed to be good for colds and bronchitis if you warmed it up. UGH!!! Can't stick it now. This is one that nobody else I know remembers. My mum used to buy sachets of an orange flavoured drink called Spree. Somebody please tell me I'm not imagining this one!

Jay

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Amos
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 04:08 PM

My youthful dreams were fueled on Charleston Chews, Bonomo's Turkish Toffee, the Double Bubble fantasies of Pud and Sis, jawbreakers, and many of the fine confections already mentioned above. Between those and ten-cent DC comics, my life was complete!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 04:02 PM

My daughter (21) visited us last year and had candy cigarettes in her purse! They still make 'em! They just don't sell them in the candy department. You have to be an adult to buy them just like the real thing. No BS. If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'.

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: C-flat
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 03:52 PM

I remember Spangles well! What a name for hard boiled fruit sweets!
Now that I've started to think about it there's a couple of others spring to mind, like "Parma-violets". Funny little perfumed tablets that tasted of soap, YUK!
Candy cigarettes were also very popular then, no wonder so many of my generation are smokers.

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 03:52 PM

Yeah, Jay... where are all our Brit Buddies... give us Amuricans some idea what you're talking about... what the stuff looked like, tasted like...

For us folks over here, how about sodee pop? Did they have Birely's where you grew up... just came in orange and grape... squat little bottles with a wide mouth... ahead of their time...   Another favorite of mine, which has finally made it east, and doesn't take anything like it did as a kid was Squirt, which had the odd promotional one liner, "In the public eye." Never took it literally..
Squirt was a grapefruit lemon mix... when I was a kid, it had little bit of pulp in it, even. Now, it comes to you through the miracle of modern chemisty.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Sonnet
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 03:41 PM

Can anyone (UK) remember Spangles?

Jay

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 10:51 AM

I've had little square, kinda-jellied, kinda-fruit flavored candy wrapped in rice paper (the novely is that you eat them with the paper on. Which of course means, you defeat the purpose of a wrapper, because you're eating the wrapper, germs and all. They were kinda good. They weren't any serious competition for snickers bars..

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 10:07 AM

Without intending to in any way disparage our esteemed colleague Masato's homeland, has anyone else had the (dis)pleasure of sampling Japanese candies? A co-worker brought several varieties back from an Okinawa trip a few years back and I must admit they were without exception the most god-awful things this old I'll-eat-anything junk-food-junky has ever tried. For the sake of their economy, the Japanese should be thankful that they have invested their energies in automobiles and electronics instead of confectionaries.

Bruce

Subject: RE: BS: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 07:54 AM

Thanks, C-Flat... I was wondering if anyone from over your way was going to enlighten us... 4 CDs in the mail...

Jerry

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: C-flat
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 06:20 AM

My own personal favourite was the inappropriately named "Daintee" chew. For the princely sum of 1penny (and I'm talking pre-decimalisation) you could attempt to dislocate your jaw and extract a molar or two with this delightful, individually wrapped piece of confectionary. When correctly inserted, this toffee lump would extend both cheeks so that you couldn't close your mouth properly and brown, toffee spittle could run freely from your mouth, down your chin and onto your clothes. Always a bit hit with the grown-ups!
On a good week my pocket money might extend to a handful of "Fruit Salads", available in a range of chewy flavours and very popular at four for 1p, followed up with a "Sherbert Dab" which was nothing more than a small packet of sherbert with a liquorice stick for dipping/dabbing.
The sherbert was great at sticking to the Daintee-spittle and we all went home with white beards and black tongues and lips!
"Pop" was something of a luxury item which, if any kid had enough money to buy a bottle, was routinely passed around from one dirty mouth to the next and eventually the empty bottle would be filled with water and "flavoured" with the remaining dog-ends of liquorice sticks from the sherbert dabs.
I'm sure that our immune systems were strengthened as a result of all that exposure!
Happy days!
C-flat.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: GUEST,KT
Date: 07 Oct 02 - 01:59 AM

Well...speaking of old time sweets, does anyone remember Buried Treasures? They were flat topped cone shaped ice cream on a brightly colored plastic stick which, when the ice cream was gone, revealed a fabled cartoon character.

And how about fire balls? A penny a piece!

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 11:00 PM

Miken: These are the two other verses and the chorus:

Cowboys all were honest then, their horses all were trusty
And when they slept out in the rain, their guns never got rusty
And when they fought, they never lost, but they never won the girl
And the buttons on the shirts they wore were simulated pearl

We'd listen to the radio, and drink our Ovaltine
Decoding secret messages with our Captain Midnight Rings
And for a box top and a dime, we'd wait a month or more
For a hand-tooled belt that glowed in the dark, Just like Lone Ranger wore

CHORUS: And the three mile Creek was four miles long
         Back when I was young
         And I knew the words to every song
         Known to the human tongue

Jerry      

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: catspaw49
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 10:56 PM

Vanilla extract.........I'm about 25 or so and a group of my friends and I are sitting around playing poker one night. Randy has a friggin' case of root beer that he got cheap so we're stuck with it and I got to thinking that a bit of Vanilla Extract would help the flavor. I rummage around and find a big bottle of the stuff in his wife's cabinet and proceed to enhance the flavor of the stuff. After about 3 root beers I am feeling exceptionally happy and it takes a monute to figure out that I'm getting blasted on Vanilla Extract. It was only then also that I added 2 and 2 and knew why my grandad always added Vanilla Extract to his............


Spaw

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 10:50 PM

Hey, you can still get Tide detergent.... And as I mentioned to BWL on Mudchat, Sugar Mommas were smaller versions (and less expensive) of Sugar Daddies... how sexist..

Jerry

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Alice
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 10:39 PM

SNAPS!! I'd forgotten about Snaps! I really liked them.... licorice with a sugar coating that tasted like Tide detergent.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 10:27 PM

Man! Step away from the computer for a couple of hours, and look what everyone has dredged up (maybe a poor choice of words?)

Just some responses:

Guest KT: I loved Snaps... in little boxes that only cost a penny... they tried to copy them with the stuff you by in the movie theaters... are they Now and Lasters, or Ike and Mike? They cost $11 a box now, I think..

Mountain Dog - no, Devil gum didn't make it to southern Wisconsin, but I remember the cheap wrappers and how brittle the gum was. Back when I first started to write all this stuff down, probably close to thirty years ago, the memories were fresh in my mind... I found the stuff that I wrote, and Chum Gum was only a penny a pack, but had four sticks of gum, instead of five.

Ranger Steve: Zagnut... toasted to a brown coconut outer coating... mmmm, one of my favorites. So, they had them in New Jersey, too... who says that New Jdrsey is backward?

Alice... Ah yes, Walnetos and Swuirrel Nut Zippers... wasn't there a similar penny candy called Mary Janes>

Spaw... did thopse aluminum tumblers come initially as containers for cottage cheese? That's a whole 'nother subject... containers you could re-use, including the wonderful world of jelly glasses.. And yes, it wasn't until I came to New York City in 1960 that I heard pop called soda. When we'd go back to Wisconsin, my sons always got a kick out of calling soda "Pop." Your description of the ccorner store is perfect... we had one a black away from our house... wrote a verse about an alcholic who rented part of our house, who I'd go down to the corner store to get extract of vanilla... his wife caught on to him and stopped his credit at all the liquor stores, so he switched to extract of vanilla... sweetest breath in town...

"He'd send me to the corner store, with a dollar in my hand
For extract of vanilla, and never mind the brand
As long as it was alchohol, it was all the same to him
It helped to pass the time away, back in Tommy's room

I've found a list six blocks long, but I think I'll let others pick their memories... I had forgotten about Walnettos, by the way...

Jerry

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: rangeroger
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 10:17 PM

Spaw, as a mechanic and racer you should remember that Blacjack Gum ranks right up there with JB Weld and baling wire for keeping things together.

After moving to Idaho I'm sure glad that I don't own a British sports car anymore. They bale the hay with polypropylene string up here. Plays hell with trying to rehang an exhaust pipe.

rr

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: GUEST,KT
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 09:23 PM

Bee-dubya-ell, what you are describing sounds a lot like MacIntosh Toffee, available only in Canada when I was a kid. KT
   

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 09:12 PM

Ranger Steve - You are absolutely unquestionably correct! They were Sugar Babies!   Now the question becomes, "Was there a Sugar Mamma in the family, or did BWL just take out too many brain cells in the 70's?" Seems like it was a bar like Sugar Daddy but with a difference of some kind but I'm damned if I can remember what the difference was. Maybe it had a more vanilla flavor or was softer. Further research seems to be in order. Of course it could just be a false memory implanted during that time the little guys in that funny looking flying thing took me off to that place where they..... Oh, nevermind.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: GUEST,KT
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 09:11 PM

Spaw, the colored aluminum tumbler........I'd almost forgotten those......and yes, Vernor's ....va va va VOOM!!!

How 'bout Howard's scented gum (in a purple and silver box) and Violets? And those horrible things called Snaps? How 'bout good ol' Ribbon candy? (available only at Christmas)

KT

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Mountain Dog
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 08:08 PM

Jerry R.

Do you remember Chum Gum's twin, Devil Gum? It also sold for about 3 cents a pack and packed a cinnamon wallop for about 2-3 minutes. It, too, was reformed from pre-stressed chicle and usually shattered like asbestos siding when you first popped it in your mouth. (Both it and Chum Gum's individual sticks were wrapped in a plain white paper rather than the Wrigley-style foil wrap and so always arrived at the five and dime store's candy counter in a seriously dessicated state.)

Thanks to you and everyone else for the tooth-corroding memories!

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: X
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 07:11 PM

A candy you can't find anymore is the little "Chocolate Babies." They were little "Tootsie Roll" type chocolates pressed into the shape of babies.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: catspaw49
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 07:00 PM

NECCO is the New England Confectionary Company, a division now of UIS. The other divisions are all automotive products......fuel and water pumps (Airtex), ignition parts (Wells), brake parts (RBM), and lube equipment (Luberfiner). I always found that a bit odd. I wouldn't have known except I worked for Airtex at one point.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Alice
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 06:49 PM

The old fashioned candy site says dots on paper were made by Necco and were called "Buttons".

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Alice
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 06:43 PM

I'm "up North" and we have Goo Goo Clusters in every grocery store. Why is this thread reminding me of root beer?

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: mack/misophist
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 06:42 PM

M&M's were inspired by the English candy Hundreds and Thousands (or something like that). And there were local drinks - or sort of local. Brown Cow, Strawberry Madison, and Grape Nehi.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: RangerSteve
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 06:42 PM

BWL - I thought the bite sized Sugar Daddys were called Sugar Babies.
Anyway, how about Sky Bars. A chocolate bar divided into sections with different cream fillings in each section. They still exist, but they're hard to find. I also liked Zero bars - white chocolate around nougat. Turkish Taffy, too.

If you have a Cracker Barrel restaurant near you (you have to be near an interstate) their gift shops carry hard-to-find candy like the Sky Bars, BlackJack gum, etc. They're also about the only place up north where you can get GooGoo Clusters, which is candy the way God intended it to be, except the peanut butter version isn't that good.

I almost forgot - Zagnut - a Clark Bar with coconut instead of the chocolate coating.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Alice
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 06:36 PM

Neccos.
I remember playing "church" and using Neccos for communion.

Walnettos

Squirrel Nut Zippers (before the band)

Licorice Nips

Sen Sen

Big Hunk (always my favorite and used to be five cents)

You can still buy old fashioned candy .... now online.
http://www.ebulkcandy.com/sys-tmpl/oldtimefavorites/

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Alice
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 06:30 PM

Clove chewing gum

Dots (on paper)

Didn't we have a thread on old fashioned candy a couple of years ago? I swear I remember talking about the dots of hard sugar on strips of paper.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Sorcha
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 06:29 PM

Oh god, spaw, I remember those fizzie tabs! Lordy, it's been a long time. I'll never forget the first time I tasted Sweet Tarts, and I still love them. The "chewy" ones are even better. We don't have a 7-11 anymore--it's called (I kid you NOT) Kum & Go...........I just can't call it that.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: catspaw49
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 06:18 PM

Along with the Teaberry and Black Jack, let us not forget Beamans and Clove which were also reissued. I wish they'd reissue them again here.

Ah yes, the delicacies of youth. Money went farther back then, but there was a lot less of it so deciding upon a purchase at the corner store was a major financial decision. Did you all grow up with the tiny little markets where the owner or his wife would be required the patience of Job to deal with us as we perused the contents of loose candies in the display case? I remember as did the writer Jean Shepherd, that there was a certain social caste system based around the candy you ate. It was a different type of kid who sucked on Root Beer Barrels than the Jawbreaker man. And even within the Jawbreaker realm, you tended toward a color preference, swearing that your choice was far superior to those of your cronies. No "real man" as we often thought of ourselves, would have dared to buy one of those little tins with the sugar fried egg. The thing came with it's own little tin spoon guaranteed to slice through a kid's tongue, lip, or sometimes both.

Now gum was a different thing altogether. I ruined my teeth at a young age chewing those hard, flat, rectangular, pink things (purportedly bubble gum) that came with a pack of five baseball cards. Forking over your hard won nickel for a pack of unknown cards gave many of us our first taste of gambling and trading the cards taught us our first lessons in commerce. I recall well the day that Rocky Colavito popped up in a pack and the joy it brought me to have my full fledged hero in my collection. In '58 and '59 I had complete sets of all teams. In '63 I started my forays to the dentist to repair the damage. When I moved in '79 I threw them out thinking, "What a great memory but what worthless shit this is!"   Oh well.........Last week though I went through my friend Wayne's meager few cards held in a model box....'65 Ford Fairlane, AMT kit I believe...and outside of the fact that we did find a few worth some money, the most amazing thing to me was that when we opened the box, you could still smell the gum.

Where I grew up, it was called Pop, and the first time a carbonated beverage was referred to as "soda" I thought this new kid who used the term was talking about an "Ice Cream Soda" or Egg Creme that we got at the dairy store. Parents were frugal in their purchases of pop although grandparents had it on hand in quantity. The problem here was that grandparents always bought that off-brand stuff in flavors like orange, grape, and black cherry. Most grandparents around my neck of the woods never scrimped on Root Beer (Hires or Stewarts) or Ginger Ale (Vernors), but they never had a good orange like Nehi, the gassiest pop ever consumed, nor did they often indulge in the name brand colas. Camping a month or so back, we were in a country store that sold a really fine Black Cherry Cola and although as a kid I drank this concoction only when everything else was gone, it now tastes superb. Is it a physical change in my taste buds......or one brought on by unrepeatable times, long past, but never forgotten?

I think it's my taste buds really......I must have gone through a physical change. How else can you account for the fact that in those halcyon days of my youth that on a hot summer day, a Fizzie tablet, mixed with tepid water from a garden hose, in a colored aluminum tumbler, used to taste so damn good?

Spaw

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Miken
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 05:53 PM

More verses?

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Miken
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 05:51 PM

I like it, Jerry.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 05:24 PM

You have reminded me of one of my favorite cartoons, Miken. It's a drawing of a father and his son walking through the snow. The father says to the son, "When I was a kid, the snow used to come up to here on me," motioning to the center of his chest. His son, walking next to him has the snow up to the same point on his chest...

I did write a song with that perspective in mind:

"We were all much smaller then, and everyone was bigger
There was a kid who lived down the block, with a dog the size of Trigger
Our prairies all were empty lots, our mountains, just a hill
And for a dime at the corner store, a kid could eat his fill"

Jerry

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Miken
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 05:13 PM

Ain't it a shame that the ones remaining ( talking Payday, butterfinger, Mars bars, etc.) have shrunk so bad! Or maybe its that I'm three times larger! ( Nahhh)

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 04:26 PM

I find that a lot of the old cheapo candies (ie Teaberry gum & Chik-o-stix)are still produced, but exclusively for distribution through the dollar stores like Dollar General and Family Dollar. I haven't seen 'em at the 7-11 in years.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 04:07 PM

Sorcha: They "re-issued" Black Jack and Teaberry gum a few years, and I see they're still around. For those who never chewed Black Jack, it was (and is) licorice flavored (for about two minutes) gum. Teaberry was "grown-up" gum, from our perspective as kids... kinda like Heath Bars...

Jerry

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Sorcha
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 03:51 PM

We can still get most of that stuff here. Chic-lets,(gum, 4 little pieces in a box), Pixie stix, BlackJack gum.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Giac
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 03:45 PM

Cowtails -- a real long caramel stick with a cream filling. Guaranteed to stick to your teeth for hours.

Gold Bricks -- Little chocolate bricks, with ground nuts, wrapped in gold foil.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: X
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 03:23 PM

The "American Dental Society" once owned "Sugar Daddies." No kidding, their name was on the back of the wrapper.

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 03:22 PM

waxed lips, those little wax bottles of coloured sugar water, and the little ice cream cones which were really just spun sugar - can't remember the names of any of them, OH! and black licorice pipes, PLUS candy cigarettes!

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 03:08 PM

Forgot to mention that all of the above, if chomped down upon vigorously, were guaranteed to either break a tooth or snatch out a filling, one or the other.

Still Bruce

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 03:05 PM

Ah yes! The cheapo candy rack at the little sundry shop a few blocks away from my grandmother's house. In addition to Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies we had:
Black Cows (or was it "Kows"?) - essentially a chocolate Sugar Daddy
Sugar Mammas - same stuff as Sugar Daddies only bite-size (sorta like Milk Duds)
Chick-o-Stix - like the inside of a Butterfinger bar, only cheaper - a foot long and only a nickel
A whole bunch of different little boxed things from Ferrara Candies - Red Hots, Lemonheads, Jawbreakers, Atomic Fireballs, Boston Baked Beans

Bruce

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 02:55 PM

And then of course, there was Bazooka bubble gum with those hilarious jokes by Bazooka Joe..

Jerry

Subject: RE: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: RichM
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 02:47 PM

Same era: Fleer's double bubble gum?

Subject: Chum Gum and Sugar Daddies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 06 Oct 02 - 02:37 PM

A while back, I was fooling around with a song, including as many kinds of candy, ice cream and soda pop as I could remember that I could get at the corner store. I came up with a pretty long list, but I wonder what you remember... there has to be a Brit split on this one... Aussies probably had their own stuff, too.

Chum Gum came out for a while in the earl fifties, and was a pack of gum for only 3 cents. After you'd chewed a stick for about three minutes, the muscles in your jaw would start to lock up, and after another three or four minutes, it would become too painful to chew. We always figured that it was re-processed gum from under the seats in a movie theater... but hey, it was only three cents, and if you didn't have a nickle, you selectively forgot how bad the stuff was.

Sugar daddies were caramel suckers on a wooden stick that had a little saying embossed into the stick.

Care to add any delicacies to the list? I'm getting hungry, already...

Jerry