Amurol Confections - Wrigley - Innovation trade ad - December 1995
I’ve spoken before about Amurol, the division of Wrigley responsible for things like Big League Chew and Bubble Tape among many other fun products. Though they started as a sugarless gum company, they ended up becoming the novelty arm of their larger Wrigley parent. The amount of novelty gum products they came up with in the 1980’s and 1990’s rivaled that of the established novelty gum manufacturers. In fact, 1995 saw the release of a particular fun range from them.
The trade ad at the top of today’s article is a great guide for me to sort through what I have here and present a small selection of pieces. I don’t have every item pictured, but I have a few. So without further adieu, let’s get to it:
Wrigley-Amurol - Super-Active Gum - Blow & Throw - bubblegum pouch package - 1995
I really dig the Super-Active Gum branding, as well as the crazy ideas behind them. I don’t think anyone else has ever tried to market a bubble gum to be thrown. I have another Super-Active Gum pouch pack, and it’s my favorite, as it features a great illustration by the artist who created the original Big League Chew mascot art, Bill Mayer [Bill tells me this piece was created for general point-of-purchase displays, but was heavily edited and used on this packaging anyway.]:
Wrigley-Amurol - Super-Active Gum - Grow Gum - bubblegum pouch package - 1995
Next up is a pair of bubble gum novelty containers in the form of devices. With these, it’s the container that is the novelty, rather than the gum itself:
Amurol-Wrigley - Bubble Jackpot Bubble Gum - candy gum container - 1995
Amurol-Wrigley - Computer Bubble Gum - candy gum container - 1996
Amurol produced quite a few novelty container products in the 1990’s, and eventually I’ll be sharing more right here on the site.
Next up is a particularly fun one from the squeeze-gum category. I recall trying Bazooka’s squeeze gum when it was first introduced in the late 70’s or early 80’s. I liked it but it took a lot to get decent bubbles out of it. I never tried this one when it was out, though:
Amurol-Wrigley - Snake Bite -Boa-Berry Bubble Gum - squeeze gum tube container - 1995
Last but not least is probably the weirdest of the items I have to show today. The 1990’s gave us a number of fads, but one that I never could quite warm up to was the Magic Image thing. While it wasn’t for me, a ton of people did enjoy the game of finding the hidden image in the patterns, and never one to miss a trend, Amurol produced a gum product based on them.
Amurol-Wrigley - Magic Eye Bubble-Prints bubble gum - Shark - 1995
Amurol-Wrigley - Magic Eye Bubble-Prints bubble gum - Palm Trees - 1995
That’s all I have in my collection from Amurol’s 1995 Innovation ad.
One I don’t have but that I’d love to find, is a pouch of that “Loud” bubble gum – it looks pretty cool and is probably another of the Super Active Gum line.
See you next time with more CollectingCandy.com fun!
The “Aquarium Candy” wasn’t all that great. I tend to enjoy the horrible sticky goo candies like that, but it was pretty gross.
ugh, I see Bubble Tape in there. I remember the thing to do was to chew the entire roll at a time. Amazing none of us choked to death on it
Sean – Yep, that’s Bubble Tape, one of the more lasting Amurol novelty items. Introduced in 1987, it’s still around and celebrates 25-years this year.
i remember blow and through that stuff tasted like wax
I wonder why squeeze gum disappeared off the face of the planet? The world once again needs Amurol confections to fill the innovation-less 2010’s!
I remember all of these products. I actually bought a couple tubes of “Bubble Dude”, a slightly earlier squeeze gum released by them around 1994-95, they had troll hair on the cap. Amazingly it is still completely edible and has that awesome fruity flavor I remember! I love it! Got one tube left that I’ll stretch out for the next 50 years or so . I’ve also purchased a box of TOPPS Batman Returns squeeze gum. Sadly the gum inside went horribly bad! A waxy powdery plastic-ey dangerous substance came out of those containers…
So to anyone looking for this stuff to try, go with Amurol. Almost 20 years later and their product is still chewable! I LOVE YOU AMUROL!!!
Hi do you know the name of this troll gum?. Or have a picture of it?? Im been looking for this for a long time now…i found your post thought maybe you can help, i researched google…but no luck. Thanks
Of course I know the name of this wonderful gum, I wrote it in my comment! It’s called Bubble Dude, fruit flavored. If you would like a picture I’ll send you one. Just toss your E-Mail my way.
Hi actually the one I was thinking of was Bungee that was my favorite!!! I still have a little shoe that was the top to it…I ate bubble dude also but my favorite was bungee..thanks
I looked up Bungee and I actually found a picture of it. I remember having it years ago as well, along with Bubble Tongue. Here it is:
http://dutchgum.com/packaging.html” title=”Bungee Gum
HERE IS A PRODUCT BY AMUROL FROM THE MID 80’S. THEY WERE CALLED, ” GUSH BALLS ”. MY CHILDREN LOVED THEM. THERE ARE MINI BURST TYPES OUT THERE, BUT THESE WERE LOADED WITH A GOOD TASTING, JELLY- LIKE LIQUID. HAS ANYONE HEARD OF THEM ? DO THEY EVEN EXIST ANYMORE ?
This is all I found in regards to “Gush Balls”.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-12-16/features/9004140040_1_bubble-gum-amurol-novelty/2
I love old news articles!
Is there any place out there that still might sale the bungee gum tube ?
I’ve been searching for those “extreme” gums FOREVER!!!! I thought I was going crazy. I remember seeing them as a kid in Chicago at 7Eleven and I bought the Blow & Throw kind once. It actually worked. I never knew the name of the company that made them and never saw them sold in other stores and they just vanished. You don’t even know how happy I am to have found this page 🙂