Pointless Nostalgia - Part 4.0

Whoo hoo! Another trip to my favourite town - Rememberytown!

This time around, we're going to be sniffing up some fantastical treats, or rather just one treat. The big treat. Wrigley's Big Red gum. I dare you, I double-triple dare you to find a bigger, longer lasting red cinnamon gum. I'll give you a little while, because it's such a dumb dare.

Growing up in South Detroit, or more accurately, St. Albert, Alberta, Big Red was an awesome gum to purchase. Among the pantheon of chewing gum on the market at the time, Big Red was that grown-up gum that I as a kid just had to fake the fact that I hadn't brushed that day. As an impressionable young junior high student, the convenient across-the-street location of a Shell Store by my school provided me with my cinnamon fraud, and that gum was the perfect cover after a Big Bite hot dog, or a slice of pizza. Big Red didn't have had the athletic feel of "Big League Chew", or the pure, disgusting novelty of "Thrills" (side note: how is it that kid's feared having their mouths washed out with soap after swearing, but would eat this gum like it was edible gold?), but it did have a kick-ass commercial, strategically dipped in a sweet awesome sauce of terrible acting and an insanity-producing jingle:

For some reason, Big Red was portrayed as a somewhat aphrodisiac for the masses. First off, it's bigger than the leading cinnamon gum, so obviously it compliments a man's endowments. Obviously. Second, it would seem to give the chewer more confidence, more personality, and definitely more sex appeal. I certainly can attest to being more attracted to a lady once she's had a stick of gum. There's just something about the robotic jaw motion that's hypnotically erotic. There's been numerous products on the market that claim, directly or indirectly, to attract members of either sex, but this is gum. It costs about a buck or less. Believe me, the kind of gum you chew is the least of your worries.

What I really enjoy is the idea that this gum is so potent, so consuming, that no-one dares leave the side of someone who's chewing it. If your partner just popped a Big Red in their mouth, don't make any fucking plans. You've just been scheduled for a four or five-hour makeout slobber fest. That's pretty encouraging, I must say, and I may have fell for it back in my youth. Of course, I was stupider then, but we all were. Why else did we save all those "Double Bubble" comics in order to get the free beach ball or frisbee? So we could play with something after making out.

Pop culture fans, pay attention to the band member in the commercial. You may recognize him as Peter Billingsly, who played Ralphie Parker in A Christmas Story (1983), my all-time favourite Christmas movie.