This brand made a fortune blowing bubbles for 75 years

Remember Bazooka Bubble Gum?

Bazooka was introduced by the Topps company just after the war in 1947. The first Bazooka gum came in a roll – like a Tootsie Roll. It contained six pieces of gum in a white, blue and red wrapper that sold for a nickel. It also came with a small comic strip.

The main character was Bazooka, the Atom Bubble Boy. He would blow big, pink bubbles that would float him off to various adventures. The character didn't prove to be popular, and the public preferred spending a nickel for a full-sized chocolate bar. So Topps changed their strategy.

They started selling single pieces of Bazooka Bubble Gum for a penny and created a new character for its comic strips.

Enter: Bazooka Joe.

Bazooka Joe had a very unusual look. He wore a baseball cap, and for some reason never explained in the comic strip, he sported a black eye patch. But there is a reason. Back in 1947, a man named Harold Rudolph wrote a book titled Attention and Interest Factors in Advertising. One of Rudolph's rules was that a photo with a story element grabs attention. Adman David Ogilvy read that book. It influenced one of his most famous ad campaigns of the 1950's.

Ogilvy created a character called "The Man in the Hathaway Shirt" – and to give him some mysterious story appeal, Ogilvy put a black eye patch on him. It was a strange choice, but that eye patch made the campaign – and Hathaway shirts – a runaway success. So in 1954, the Topps creative team satirized the Hathaway campaign and gave Bazooka Joe his iconic eyepatch.

The resulting Bazooka Joe comics were an instant hit and ignited sales of Bazooka bubble gum. Each comic was a sequential story containing three or four frames. Each told a silly joke and a wisecracking Bazooka Joe usually had the punch line. The canvas was just 2.5 inches, but the Bazooka team pulled it off. The bottom of each comic also contained a one-line fortune – like a fortune cookie. They were pretty amusing, and specific.

For example, one said, "You'll use your love of flying to become an airline pilot."

Topps did extensive advertising to retailers persuading them to stock Bazooka gum. The company sweetened that offer by figuring out a way to encourage brand loyalty. It began offering prizes to kids that could be redeemed with comics.

For example, you could get a necklace by sending in 100 bazooka comics, or a pocket knife for 375 comics. Before long, kids were buying half a billion pieces of Bazooka gum every year.

Topps created 1,500 Bazooka Joe comics over the decades, and came to realize they could recycle them every seven years. The main target for Bazooka was kids aged 6-13, and every seven years a new generation arrived who were fresh to the comics.

Every so often, Bazooka Joe was updated to keep pace with the times. His look changed first in the early '60s, then again in the '80s. In the '90s, he began wearing low-slung baggy jeans and his baseball cap was worn backwards. But the eye patch remained.

Then in 2012, Topps faced a crisis. Sales dropped 48 per cent. So after 59 years, the company decided to discontinue the famous Bazooka Joe comics. The Bazooka packaging was completely re-designed, a new flavour was added and brainteasers replaced the comics. Then the next few years saw a resurgence in all things retro, especially in the candy industry.

Topps responded to the trend by finally answering the number one request they kept hearing from customers: "Bring back the comics."

So in 2019, Topps announced a limited-edition Throwback Pack. It featured the nostalgic packaging, and original flavour Bazooka bubble gum wrapped in classic Bazooka Joe comics.

Last year, Bazooka Bubble Gum celebrated its 75th anniversary. After all this time, the bubble still hasn't burst.

For more on enduring brands and other stories from Under the Influence, click or tap the play button above to hear the full episode. Find more episodes on the CBC Listen app or subscribe to the podcast.