2006

Brand New series!

In August, I was fortunate to get my hands on a tub of the "New & Improved" Bazooka bubble gum. This was the new 'twist wrapped' version with the comics printed directly on the inside of the wrapper. Two new flavors were introduced; Watermelon and Cotton Candy along with the original flavor.

In early September, I finally saw the 25 piece 'party boxes' available and bought a few. I love the new packaging. It's eye-catching and colorful, a nice improvement over the previous design. The party boxes contain the rectangular shaped gum we are all used to, with the comics separate from the wrappers. The most striking difference between the new Bazooka Joe comics and every previous series is ... the new comics are a blue monochrome!

Besides the lack of color, Joe and his gang have, naturally, been re-designed. Mort remains a constant but the rest of the cast are all new characters. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Besides Mort, Joe now hangs out with; Casey, Wolfgang, Cindy, DJ, Kevin and Jake. Below are some samples of this 50 comic series.

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WRAPPER

As mentioned earlier, the 'twist wrapped' version of the gum has comics printed directly on the inside of the wrapper. The problem with that is, the wrappers are some kind of semi-transparent, thin plastic making the comics difficult to read. It's especially acute on the Cotton Candy wrappers. I would suspect this problem should be corrected in the future (making these early wrappers a collectors item ... ha).

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ORIGINAL

COTTON CANDY

WATERMELON

Another variation to look for includes the comics that also serve as wrappers around the gum in Bazooka '12 Packs'. These are distinguished by having a Topps production code printed on the comic.

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thanks to Rich Provily

25 pc. box

I'll be adding new information as discoveries are made. Happy collecting!

Main Bazooka Joe page.

9/06