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Our favorite gum is (or, we should say, was) Bazooka bubble gum. We like the hard pink square that isn’t chock-filled with softeners and bizarre flavors. Grape, Cherry, and Regular were just fine for us. At age 53, Bazooka Joe is just fine to us and doesn’t need changes.
Now, however, political correctness has struck even our fave bubble gum and its emblematic American boy portrayed in the comics insert.
Bazooka Joe product managers at Topps claim that today’s softened youth prefer “softer chews,” and so the pink gum is being softened. Ditto for Bazooka Joe. He’s being “diversified” along with his friends and given a girlie-man, hip-hop makeover. Say it ain’t so, Joe!

Old Bazooka Joe; New Extreme Make-over Bazooka Joe
Predictably, Bazooka Joe’s new comic “friends” include a complete line-up of the left-wing version of diversity: a masculine Title IX-style chick, a European student, an environmentalist chick, and a hip-hop DJ. The only thing missing: a transsexual, lacto-ovo bra-burning Hezbollah member.

Bazooka Joe’s New Diversity Gang
According to reports (scroll down):

Out with his rolled-up pants. In with a backward hat and ripped jeans.

HUH?!

Out with his old friends. In with a multicultural gang who will appear in Bazooka comics: tomboy Casey McGavin, German exchange student Wolfgang Spreckels [DS: Like Deiter from “Sprockets”?], greenie Cindy Lewis, sci-fi fan Kevin Griffin, and DJ Chen, who loves mixing records.

Another report on Bazooka Joe’s unnecessary “extreme makeover,” here.
More on Topps and Bazooka here.