By Ken Beck
The Nashville Tennessean

Pink, sweet and sticky, a joy to boys and girls, and an elementary school custodian's worst nightmare, bubble gum is making a big pop.

It's the 75th anniversary of the year commercial bubble gum (Dubble Bubble) was invented, and the 50th birthday of bubble-gum comic star Bazooka Joe.

North American kids spend half a billion dollars a year on bubble gum.

The credit or the curses must go to the late Walter Deimer, an accountant who accidentally concocted bubble gum in 1928 in Philadelphia, "the city of brotherly gum."

While lots of companies today make bubble gum, Concord and Topps, the ones behind Dubble Bubble and Bazooka, are the big chews in the business.

Dubble Bubble is made in Toronto, while Bazooka is produced in Memphis, Tenn., the former home of another famous bubble gum brand, Donruss.

An hour to make

It takes a piece of Dubble Bubble about an hour to go from birth to being market ready, says Concord product manager Shannon Cooke.

"It starts in a mixing room where all the ingredients are mixed (five or six). One machine does 2,000 pounds of gum. This is squeezed into a cooling tunnel, where it cools down for 15 minutes before it's wrapped and then packaged," Cooke explains.

Dubble Bubble - made almost 24 hours a day - is exported to every country and every continent except Antarctica.

The Fleer brand was purchased by Concord in 1998, and Concord makes three varieties of bubble gum: sugar-free, twist wrap and gumball formats. They produce 20 basic flavors with several hundred combinations.

The original recipe, a sweet and spice flavor, can be difficult for purists to locate (it's available at Cracker Barrel stores).

Cooke says her company did research with kids and adults and discovered that in the United States "people favored more of a sweet taste rather than the sweet and spice."

Thus their newest bubble-gum flavor was introduced in 1998.

Topps, on the other hand, has stuck with the same recipe.

"The gum is still the classic Bazooka flavor, the same formula we've been using for 55 years now," says Bazooka brand manager Gail Sirota. "People love to open it and find it has that original smell and the comic with the piece of wisdom or fortune on the bottom."

While Dubble Bubble has its own comic kid, Pud, Bazooka's Joe, who sports a black eye patch, might be the better known of the two. Both are popular with folks who collect bubble gum memorabilia.

"I started with Garbage Pail Kids and got into Topps bubble gum products, baseball cards," says collector Jeff Shepherd, 26.

"I like the art and the colors. The artists have changed over the years. It's just a fascinating piece of Americana that began in the late 1940s," says Shepherd, who has more than 100,000 bubble-gum comics and whose prize is a 1947 box of unopened Bazooka gum.

As for Bazooka Joe, the Topps gum began in 1947 as Atom Bubble Gum and featured a comic character named Adam the Bubble Boy. B.J. came forth in 1953.

"Throughout the 1950s, '60s and '70s, Bazooka Joe and his best friend Mort have been consistent characters, but we have brought in different characters, such as Metal Dude and Zena in the 1980s. So over the years, his gang of friends has changed. They were last updated in 1996," says Sirota.

All-American kid

"Bazooka Joe is still an all-American everyday kid who likes to have fun and hang out with his friends. Today he still has the everyday kid look but now the hat is turned backward and he has a skateboard and his look is more contemporary.

The Bazooka Joe comics have been translated into more than 50 different languages. A current contest will reward some lucky chewer with 50 grand.

"If you get the lucky piece of gum, instead of the comic, you will instantly win $50,000," Sirota says of the contest, which runs through July 2004.

Meanwhile, Dubble Bubble continues to tout the tale of the modern origin of bubble gum and its inventor, Deimer.

"I was doing something else and ended up with something with bubbles," Deimer once told reporters.

So, why is it pink?

"Pink food coloring was the only one I had at hand," Deimer said.

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On the Web: www.bazookajoe.com and www.dubblebubble.com