{"id":3856,"date":"2012-05-05T22:47:39","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T02:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/?p=3856"},"modified":"2012-05-05T23:01:42","modified_gmt":"2012-05-06T03:01:42","slug":"big-league-plug-the-mythical-chocolatey-cousin-of-big-league-chew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/?p=3856","title":{"rendered":"Big League Plug – The Mythical, Chocolatey Cousin of Big League Chew!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Big League Plug pre-release promotional flyer image.<\/p><\/div>\n

Today’s piece is a short tale of finding a collectible “Holy Grail” and how much fun it can be to track down something you thought you might never see.<\/p>\n

I initially learned about the Big League Plug chocolate candy bar while doing research for my Big League Chew Retrospective<\/a> piece.<\/p>\n

The bar was first mentioned to me by Rob Nelson, the creator of Big League Chew, when I asked if there had ever been any confectionery spin-offs of his brand.\u00a0 He explained that, “There was a chocolate bar they tried, called Big League Plug…”<\/p>\n

I had never heard of Big League Plug, and certainly didn’t recall ever seeing it in my youth, so I was immediately intrigued.\u00a0 I scoured the internet but found no mentions or images of this mythical product.\u00a0 Did it actually exist?\u00a0 Did Rob remember the name wrong?\u00a0 Was it only a test-marketed item?<\/p>\n

I would eventually track down the promotional flyer image for Big League Plug which I included in the retrospective (the same image serves as today’s title image), but it would remain the only hard evidence that Big League Plug ever existed, until two months ago.<\/p>\n

It was when I acquired the incredible L.M. Kallok confectionery collection (a huge collection of vintage candy wrappers, boxes, and related ephemera) that I found this near-mythical piece of Big League Chew history.\u00a0\u00a0 Within that extensive collection was a piece I never expected to find; an actual Big League Plug foil pouch!\u00a0 And to my amazement, the look of the production packaging had changed from that shown on those earlier promotional flyers.\u00a0 Here it is:<\/p>\n

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Amurol-Wrigley - Big League Plug chewy chocolaty candy bar - foil pouch - 1982<\/p><\/div>\n

As you can see, it features a modified appearance from the standard Big League Chew bubble gum pouches while still retaining that unmistakable Big League Chew look.\u00a0 To say that I was thrilled to find this and add it to my collection is an understatement.\u00a0 I was, and am, over the moon.<\/p>\n

Big League Plug was an experiment from 1982, early in the life of the Big League Chew brand, and it was short-lived.\u00a0 What Amurol-Wrigley would eventually come to understand was something that Rob Nelson felt strongly about all along – Big League Chew was a special formula that wasn’t to be messed with, and you couldn’t graft its success onto a chocolate bar.<\/p>\n

So while the experiment failed, it created an oddball bit of spin-off packaging that had become a collector’s holy grail for me, but one I can now place in the “got-it” column.\u00a0 And that’s pretty neat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s piece is a short tale of finding a collectible “Holy Grail” and how much fun it can be to track down something you thought you might never see. I initially learned about the Big League Plug chocolate candy bar … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,56],"tags":[1205,13,133,271,37,10,14,77,180,78,23,21,272,25,15,12,41],"class_list":["post-3856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1980s","category-chocolate-2","tag-1980s","tag-80s","tag-amurol","tag-big-league-chew","tag-bubble-gum-2","tag-candy","tag-collectible","tag-collection","tag-confeciton","tag-confectionery","tag-mascot","tag-packaging","tag-rare","tag-retro","tag-sweets","tag-vintage","tag-wrigley"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2aFGk-10c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3856"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3874,"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856\/revisions\/3874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}