You Are Living in a Golden Age and You Don't Even Know It
Alissa Grosso
On Bluesky, I follow the account Discontinued Foods which periodically highlights various food products that have gone the way of the dinosaur. It’s a fun little bit of nostalgia, but it’s also a reminder of all that has vanished from our supermarket shelves. A recent post about Bubblicious Twisted Tornado gum made me realize that I was lucky enough to live through the golden age of bubblegum.
For those not lucky enough to have tried Twisted Tornado gum it was a delicious blend of different fruity flavors. It was on store shelves at a time when those shelves were filled with an excellent assortment of bubblegum options. If you weren’t up for Twisted Tornado you could have had your choice of other fruit-flavored gums including watermelon, strawberry, grape, blueberry and orange or even fun flavor pairings like strawberry banana. By my own estimate I would say the late 1980s through the 1990s were probably the golden age of bubblegum.
I don’t really chew much gum anymore, but I took a look at the small grocery store near our house. It’s the sort of place that sells pretty much every variety of gum commercially available, and the selection is pathetic. I mean this is the kind of place that carries those old timey chewing gums like Violet gum and Clove gum, but their bubble gum offerings are sparse. A lot of the shelf space ends up going to what I think of as Nicorette-esque gums, those gums with the hard candy shell that come in those little foil packs and tend to be pretty bland flavor-wise. Not pictured below are the single variety of Bubblicious and what I think were two varieties of Bubble Yum available. Though if you look down in the lower left corner you will note that the candy cigarettes are almost sold out.
I’m not sure what has led to the shrinking market for bubblegum. Perhaps it’s because today’s parents are more health-conscious and don’t want their children chewing gum that’s loaded with sugar, which I guess is a good thing. I would say this is definitely the reason we are no longer living in the golden age of children’s breakfast cereals.
My sister will be glad to hear that Discontinued Foods did feature her all time favorite cereal, Circus Fun, recently. Circus Fun was not around for long, so if you missed this one it was one of those marshmallow cereals, similar to Lucky Charms, except the cereal pieces were also extra sweet. Basically it was a bowl of sugar, which probably isn’t the healthiest way to start the day. The golden age of children’s breakfast cereal was not a healthy time. This was the 1980s, though, and the health and general well-being of children seemed to be an afterthought. I’ve noticed that even those kid’s cereals from my childhood that are still around have been made more healthy. For example if you happen to pick up a box of Honeycomb be warned that while it will taste similar to the stuff you remember from your childhood it’s nowhere near as sweet as it once was. In some cases they’ve even gone and changed the names of cereals to prove they are healthy. Sugar Smacks are now called Honey Smacks because I guess today’s parents are smart enough to avoid a cereal with the word sugar in the name.
Besides diabetes-inducing breakfast cereal, the 1980s were also the golden age of paper products. Toilet paper, tissues and napkins used to be available in a variety of colors. The idea was that you would coordinate these products with your home decor.
Walk down the paper products aisle in any supermarket today and the only choice you will have to make is between brands and how big the package is because all the tissues, napkins and toilet paper come in white and only white. I don’t know what prompted the move away from pink and baby blue toilet paper. Was it changes in home decor trends? Did the dyes used to make toilet paper pretty cause cancer?
The thing is when I lived in a time of such toilet paper, bubblegum and sugary cereal bounty I never realized I was living in a golden age. Well as Joni Mitchell once sang “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” So, that begs the question what golden age are we living in right now?
Based on my supermarket trips I would say that we are definitely living in the golden age of flavored seltzer water. Have you taken a walk down the seltzer aisle lately? It’s overwhelming. How long will it last? Only time will tell, but in forty years or so, people will likely be waxing rhapsodic about Pamplemousse LaCroix.
— Alissa
Weekly Inspiration
What I’m Reading: The Drowning House by Cherie Priest
What I’m Watching: Find Me Falling
What I’m Listening to: “Gotta Get Up” - Harry Nilsson
Find out more about my books at alissagrosso.com
Find out more about my digital art at alissacarin.com
My apologies for the typos and such this post is almost certainly riddled with.
The comic in the bubble gum that you could barely read … at my age now I would need a half hour and a magnifier or microscope !
Reading this had me imagining the Doublemint twins, old and wrinkled rocking on the front porch of a retirement home, hoping, without much faith, that someone still remembers them and might stop by for a visit. Ask your sister if she ever chewed Five Islands Spruce Gum. I harvested my own off the trees on our farm when I was younger.