When I was in college, for some reason I got my hands on a 5-foot-long mockup of a stick of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum, which adorned my dorm room for many years (and now adorns my parents' basement!)

Steve holds large gum with roommate Tim (1995)

The item was a very accurate portrayal of a stick of gum, complete with removable wrapper and foil underneath. There even were "do not litter" markings on the back. I'm not exactly sure what this was originally designed for, but it looked pretty official.

I mention this because today Wrigley — based here in Chicago — announced that they are dropping the use of foil wrappers on most of their gum lines. From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Wrigley cutting back on foil wrappers
April 22, 2010
Cheryl V. Jackson

Wrigley is scrapping the foil wrapping for its iconic brands.

After using foil for more than 100 years, Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. is dumping foil wrappers and replacing them with paper for its five key chewing-gum brands: Juicy Fruit, Doublemint, Wrigley's Spearmint, Winterfresh and Big Red.

The switch began with some of Wrigley's hip, envelope-style cardboard packs late last year and will move through all packaging this year, the company confirmed.

The paper wrappers cost about 13 percent less than foil, according to the Chicago company, which says the switch won't affect the freshness or the taste of the gum.

The move should save about 850 tons of aluminum, according to Wrigley — keeping the equivalent of 60 million cans a year out of landfills. But Wrigley will keep the silver foil wrappers on its Extra brand gum and the colored foil wrappers on its 5 brand.

Wrigley was one of the first gum makers to use foil wrappers, starting around 1900. But the stick gum is a throwback to bygone times. Today, most chewing gum comes in the form of tabs, pellets or cubes.

Sad to see this era pass… but at least I still have my oversized stick of gum to remember it by!

It's that time of year again. That's right, time to find the "good pop." That is, Kosher for Passover versions of Coke and Pepsi. These are considered awesome because they use real sugar as sweeteners instead of high fructose corn syrup. I'm not Jewish, but this Kosher stuff is awesome!

Note the yellow caps to denote Kosher

This year, the demand isn't as great, I feel, because we've been blessed by similar drinks in the form of Pepsi Throwback, Mountain Dew Throwback, and Heritage Dr Pepper. But still, as a beverage enthusiast, it was time to make a "Kosher run!"

Sucrose = Sugar

I've previously reviewed Kosher Coke, Kosher Pepsi, and even Kosher Caffeine Free Pepsi for BevReview.com, so I don't need to go into that here. This year, I went with my friend George up to Hungarian Kosher Foods in Skokie where they can always be counted on to have the Kosher drinks. And sure enough, I walked away with some 2 liters of Coke and CF Pepsi.

Kosher Bazooka Gum

But even more interesting was the box of Kosher Bazooka Gum that George walked away with. It had a very different taste, in my opinion, though to be honest I can't remember the last time I actually chewed Bazooka. (Michael Ei$ner now owns Bazooka's parent company, so maybe that's a reason!)

Click to enlarge

Beyond that, it was somewhat funny to find that the enclosed Bazooka Joe comic was written in Hebrew. I'm not sure what's happening in the comic. Care to give a guess? (Make sure you read from right to left!)