Comics in Remote Corners: Miniature Bubble-gum Strips

Comics in Remote Corners: Miniature Bubble-gum Strips

The second in a series of short essays exploring the most unusual deployments and adaptations of the comics medium

R. W. Watkins

There’s a lot of talk in these tech-savvy times about applications. A little too much talk, many would insist. Long before smartphones and personal computers, however, applications of a far more primitive nature were being realised via the comics medium. One application of comics saw the medium shrinking substantially in regards to its physical size. The standard outlets for comics in the former half of the twentieth century were the page-wide newspaper dailies, half- to full-page Sunday strips and the 7.25” × 10.25” magazine—or comic ‘book’. The burgeoning bubble-gum industry certainly supplied a scaled-down alternative to these outlets, introducing the miniature ‘bubble-gum comic’ early during the Great Depression.

According to the best of memories and historical sources, the first bubble-gum comics were produced by the Fleer company out of Philadelphia in 1930 and enclosed along with pieces of their Dubble Bubble. Founded by Frank H. Fleer in 1885, the Fleer company was known for being early producers of baseball and other trading cards (inserted in boxes of their Bobs and Fruit Hearts in 1923), and their Dubble Bubble was the world’s first commercially produced bubble-gum, introduced in 1928. The early 1930s comics featured the hunourous adventures of Dub and Bub – the Dubble Bubble Twins. It is unknown exactly how many different comics were produced featuring this duo, for they were issued unnumbered. The twins were replaced sometime in the mid 1930s by a series of unnamed stick figures. According to some sources, these were printed on a thinner, tissue-like paper—as opposed to wax paper, which became the standard—rendering them quite fragile today. By this time, the comics were being labelled as Fleer Funnies – a moniker that would persist through various incarnations and reimaginings. In addition to the comics, these inserts also included ‘Fortunes’ (e.g., “You are a real leader rather than a follower because you are not afraid to do what must be done”) and ‘Facts’ (e.g., “The first letter that was written in America of which there is any record bears the date of January, 1494”). Unlike its predecessor, Fleer Funnies were numbered, and it appears there were 130 different ‘stick people’ comics issued by the early 1940s. Beginning with No. 131, the ‘Dubble Bubble Kids’ were regularly featured in the Funnies. This cast of characters consisted of Butch, a dark-haired lad with rather prominent buckteeth, and the siblings Tim, Sis and Pud; the latter an obese boy who soon became the mascot of the gum brand. Not unlike the comics themselves—which would be shrunk to an even smaller size by the 1960s—Pud would be slimmed down in the era of Twiggy and Mick Jagger.

Joe Bowers’s contributions to bubble-gum comics: Dizzy Dramas by any other name (top) and the Dubble Bubble Kids featuring Pud

It is not known with any certainty today what artist or artists drew the Dubble Bubble comics in the early 1930s. Curiously, Dub and Bub, for whatever reasons, was credited simply to ‘Fleer’. Philadelphia cartoonist Joe Bowers (born Hugh Joseph Deeney in 1894) was definitely the artist on the ‘stick people’ inserts, which were virtually identical to his Dizzy Dramas newspaper strip. Bowers was also most likely the creator of the Dubble Bubble Kids – a 1943 promotional calendar from Fleer featuring Pud and the gang is signed by the artist in question. Sadly, Bowers was deceased by the 12th of May, 1943, having been accidentally killed at age 49 on a firing range during military duty at Camp Blanding in Florida. It is unclear whether Ray Thompson took over as cartoonist at this point or if there was an ‘interim’ artist. Whatever the specifics, Thompson became the regular artist on the inserts sometime in the 1940s. (Some sources claim that Thompson began drawing the strip in 1950, but, given the similarities between depictions of the Dubble Bubble Kids in the ’40s and depictions of the same characters a decade later, this simply doesn’t gel. It makes even less sense when one considers that the same sources also claim that Thompson created the characters.) Known for such newspaper strips as Myra North: Special Nurse and Homer the Ghost, as well as his radio plays and cartoon advertisements, he would go on to draw at least 750 mini-comics for the company. It’s unclear, however, at exactly what point he left the strip. (Longtime bubble-gum comics collector Bob Conway has suggested the late 1950s, and also questions how 750 comics were arrived at.) According to the official biography that accompanies his papers at Syracuse University, Thompson died in 1982.

Ray Thompson does the Dubble Bubble Kids; late 1940s, most likely

Pud in the 1960s

It would take nearly two decades, but Fleer’s Dubble Bubble would not remain the only bubble-gum that came dressed in mini-comics. Topps, a Brooklyn-based company best known today for its sports-themed and other trading cards, introduced Bazooka bubble-gum in 1947. At first, the company’s insert featured the strip Bubbles by Art Helfant. This was soon discontinued in favour of strips licensed from other companies, such as Fawcett’s Peg and Doc Sorebones, and National/DC’s Bonny, Lad and Dad, and Jerry the Jitterbug. There was also an attempt at developing a mascot for use in inserts and comics advertisements, but it failed to catch the public’s fancy. As a result, few today are familiar with Bazooka, the Atom Bubble Boy.

It wasn’t until late 1953, after the head of Topps Product Development Department, Woody Gelman, enlisted the artistic services of one Wesley Morse, that Bazooka Joe would see the light of day. Morse’s résumé included such strips as Switchboard Sally and May and June, as well as murals for the Copacabana, commercial illustrations, and several (illicit) ‘Tijuana Bibles’; and one is tempted to wonder if his 1930s pornographic Joe Palooka takeoffs might have been a stepping stone to ‘Bazooka Joe’. Whatever the truth, the Bazooka Joe strip debuted in 1954, and the adventures of Joe, younger brother Orville, Hungry Herman, turtleneck-muffled Mort, and girlfriend Jane caught on quickly with North America’s growing population of young ‘baby boomers’. Bazooka finally had its icon. Similar to the Dubble Bubble experience, each Bazooka insert usually also included fortunes and ‘gidget’ offers (rings, telescopes, pocket knives). Also similar to Fleer’s product, the Topps inserts were shrunken to about half their size in 1962. This format would remain the standard for decades. In keeping with Bazooka Joe’s artistic roots in Tijuana Bibles—a forerunner of the sexually explicit underground comics of the 1960s—underground cartoonist Jay Lynch took over as head writer on the strip in 1967, four years after the death of Wesley Morse; he would remain until 1990. Another underground comics figure, Howard Cruse, began drawing the strip in 1983, redesigning Joe and Mort in the process, as well as replacing the rest of cast with new characters. Cruse was replaced by yet another underground artist, Craig Yoe, in 1996. Yoe would go on to make further changes to the look and design of the characters.

Wesley Morse draws Bazooka Joe in the fabulous ’50s; the camping scenes were particularly well crafted

Recognising a good thing when they saw it, the Philadelphia Chewing Gum Corporation (founded 1947) had to have a Bazooka Joe of their own to add validity and appeal to their Swell brand of bubble-gum. Thus the humourous exploits of Tommy Swell’s Gang became a reality sometime in the mid to late 1950s. As with its predecessors, the inserts also contained fortunes and ‘prize’ offers, and were shrunk in size over time. Little is currently known about the cartoonist(s) behind the creation and chronicling of Tommy Swell and friends, except that he or she (or they) obviously did not possess the artistic skills and imagination of a Ray Thompson or a Wesley Morse. Little is also currently known for certain of the product’s end point. As Bob Conway has pointed out, no ZIP code is apparent in the postal address on any of the inserts, which indicates that the strip was most likely discontinued before July of 1963.

At least one other American brand practised the insertion of miniature comics in the ‘golden age’ of bubble-gum. Blony bubble-gum was introduced in 1929 by Jacob Warren Bowman’s Gum, Inc. of Philadelphia, and quickly overtook Dubble Bubble to become the biggest selling bubble-gum brand in the US. Despite successes in the gum and trading-card markets, however, the company underwent much infighting and at least two major court battles; and by the early to mid ’50s, Gum, Inc.—now known as Bowman Gum—was in cutthroat competition with the Topps company to sign baseball players to exclusive contracts for their card appearances. Subsequently, Bowman was bought out by Topps in 1956 for $200,000. Topps had hit pay dirt with Bazooka Joe, so it should have come as no surprise that they would apply the same promotional device to the newly acquired Blony. For the Blony inserts, the company once again turned to licensed characters, and enlisted the allure of John Goldwater’s Archie and friends. To this were added the usual fortunes and ‘prize’ offers, of course. By all accounts, Archie [and His Pals] ran for about two years as a Blony insert, in 1957 and ’58.

There would be a few other miniature comic strips deployed with bubble-gum in subsequent decades. For example, in 1978, Marvel Comics Sugar-Free Bubble Gum by Topps carried a rather dubious series of 34 oddball gag comics featuring the Marvel line of superheroes. More notably, the Maple Leaf company of the Netherlands included several series of wordless Disney ‘funny animal’ strips in their Donald (Duck) Bubble Gum between roughly 1980 and 1991. But the glory days of the bubble-gum comic were pretty much over in North America by this time, and the novelty had certainly worn off.

Bazooka Joe persevered through his various incarnations at the hands of various cartoonists, until it was announced in 2012 that the strip would be no more, and that the inserts would now feature puzzles, brain teasers and digital codes to access online videos and video games. By this time the strip was being printed in annoying blue monochrome on super-thin paper. “Bazooka Joe character chewed up and spit out by Topps,” the Huffington Post reported at the time. It was truly the end of an era.

Fleer Funnies—or rather Dubble Bubble Funnies starring Pud—has not yet suffered the same fate, surprisingly. After several mergers and takeovers, the Dubble Bubble gum is currently being produced by Tootsie Roll Industries. Not unlike the monochrome-blue Bazooka Joe, the strip is largely drenched in a tint of bubble-gum pink.

What a sheet containing a complete set of the current Dubble Bubble Funnies looks like. This sheet of 81 comics

and their wrappers was sent by Tootsie Roll Industries to Canadian filmmaker and professor Gerald Saul and his

son William after they complained to the company that they had had to purchase some 1,500 to 1,600 pieces of

gum before collecting a complete set of sixty comics. According to Gerald Saul, “the comics are laid out in a nine

by nine grid, which means they print 81 comics, not 60. There are still only 60 different ones, but 21 of them,

chosen with no clear agenda, are printed twice on the base sheet, making them more common.”

Given the steady decline in bubble-gum sales in recent decades and the companies’ tendency to cut off their nose to spite their face, it’s safe to say that the bubble-gum mini-comic is as good as dead in 2018. Things needn’t be this dire, mind you; a savvy product developer in conjunction with a perceptive market research manager could easily reimagine and harness the mini-comic in a manner more befitting 21st century tastes and target customers accordingly. But such ‘professionals’ are simply not that savvy and perceptive these days, and consumers have been rendered apathetic in their technological cocoons amidst an overwhelming barrage of product choices; so it looks like the bubble-gum comic is needlessly left to its dark fate.

Your Fortune: You have a tendency to sit on goldmines without realising it.

A sincere thank-you to Bob Conway and Gerald Saul for all their input and encouragement.