Penny Arcade-Penny Bazooka

A while back Jeff Shepherd sent along a really nice scan of a 1949 Bazooka ad which I was saving for a rainy day. Well, guess what--it's raining here at the main Topps Archive Research Complex! Actually, it's turned to snow and I'm typing this in my study but you get the idea.

Before Bazooka Joe hit the scene, Topps hit upon the "2 Big Chews" idea and was pushing the idea that gum was a healthy product via a positively Orwellian "Quality & Purity" logo on the wrapper:



This ad appeared on the back cover of a confectionery trade magazine. If you blow up the picture you can see the inner wrapper has something drawn on it. At the time, that would probably have consisted of the Willard Mullin Spalding Sports Show cartoons covered here previously although there are a couple of other possibilities:



You can clearly see the Quality & Purity logo on the wrapper. Now, there is more than one way to market bubble gum, as this old Topps postage meter ad shows:



I would say that is from the 60's or possibly early 70's and probably after Topps moved everything to Duryea, PA. By the way I found that at a site called www.brassdragon.biz although they seem to be having some technical issues, so no linky dink today. I'll give you this link instead, the first image is a classic!