Maybe this belongs in MPSIMS. But there may be a factual answer, and it’s bugged me forever:
What was the deal with the guy from BAZOOKA JOE?
Why did he always have his shirt pulled up over his mouth like that? Was the answer ever revealed?
Yeah, & why does BZ lack an eye?
Is everyone in that neighborhood some kind of mutant, requiring a disguise? :eek:
Bazooka gum was the creation of Leonard Phelps. Upon its debut, it wasn’t a strong seller, despite its unique taste. After nearly bankrupting his parents with the overhead for the gum’s production, Leonard’s parents kicked him out and demanded to be repaid. Dismayed, Phelps found his old roommate from college- one Dmitri Zukakos, now a military man in Groom’s Point, NV.
After arriving at the remote military compound, Zukakos wrangled Phelps a low-paying job in maintainence. However, Zukakos had attained enough experience with mechanizing taffy pulls back at home, he soon found himself in an engineering job at the base.
Zukakos, on the other hand, had been a troublemaker in college but was now one of the ‘guinea pigs’ for the Armed Forces’ many experiments on the time. He was chosen for clinical studies of psychotropics like LSD -often without prior knowledge. Though Zukakos had been at Groom Point long enough, he’d been put through the Army’s various ‘loyalty programs.’ However, when under the influence of some of the hallucinogens he’d been given, he would create revealing, if primitive, renditions of some of his encounters.
Phelps found and began circulating these small doodles among the officers employed there. But when the higher-ups caught wind of this, they had Zukakos take a mandatory leave for what the other officers were told was a ‘more important assignment.’
After 7-12 business days, Zukakos returned. However, he was now extraordinarily muscle-bound, and oddly enough, his right hand was 2.3 cm larger than his left. He had no memory of the time spent away from base, but requested that he be called Joe, as that was ‘more American.’
At this point, the Gov’t ceased most of their psychotropics testing. However, while cleaning the bunks, Phelps found a small cache of recently-made doodles. In his new engineering position, he could use Army machinery late at night to pull his gum more than he could with the old machinery he’d had at home. Phelps didn’t have the resources for proper wrappers, though, so in a flash of inspiration, he began to wrap them in the small doodles.
MK-MORT was believed to have been discontinued in 1960, but some believe the government is still maintaining test subjects in bunkers scattered throughout the world.
But seriously? No idea.
Mort, of course, is Death. And Death only shows you his full face when he is visiting on Serious Business. Since you are presumably not dead, you can’t see all of Mort’s face.
Or something.
In the bilingual Canadian Bazooka Joes, Mort (French for dead) had a different name… can’t recall what it was, though. Probably the drugs they put in it.
The heck with Mort–why is the kid asking him for a dollar wearing a kicky little Carole Lombard cocktail hat from the 1930s?
When I was very young I had to wear an eyepatch to correct my vision. I don’t remember it, but I have a family photo showing it.
Sally in the Peanuts strip went through a period of wearing an eyepatch to correct her lazy eye. I’m guessing this was actually pretty common a few decades ago.
I was born in '60 (tomorrow is my birthday, by the way :eek: ) and I remember lots of kids in the 60’s & 70’s having patches for lazy eye. I don’t see any kids wearing them now. Has something changed in the treatment?
I was born in '82 and I saw kids who had an eyepatch (or even just a gauze bandage over the eye) for lazy eye treatment. If I were to see a small kid with one, my first assumption would be that he or she had a lazy eye, not that he or she was missing an eye.
PK,try this guy on “the bubble gum comic collection” site,he would definatly know,let us know what he says. 
Can’t be, because he doesn’t speak IN CAPITAL LETTERS. (Or does he?)
Mort is only Death’s apprentice.
Bazooka Joe’s Mort and Fat Albert’s Dumb Donald were just two sides of the same coin. Perhaps they were hiding bad cases of acne.
Mort: Joe, I have to ask you a question. A real question, An important question. ANd if you answer it with one of your typical lame , ancient jokes, I’m going to gouge out your eye with white hot needles. Now, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?
Joe: Practice.
Mort: I WARNED you, damn it! (Pulls out white hot needles at pounces.)
Joe: AAAAAAARGH, my eye! The pain, the pain!
Aaaaach! Zombie!
Mort’s a zombie?!?
I always assumed that Mort shot his mouth off in the same bazooka accident that cost Joe his eye.
My 6 year old relative has a Lazy eye (aka Amblyopia). The Eye Doc gave us a choice: an eye patch that needed to be put on every day or “liquid patch” eye drops in his good eye to blur the vision and force him to use the bad eye. Given the potential for fighting and forgetting we went liquid. He gets drops 1X per week the only side effect is that the drops dilate the pupil and can make the eye light sensitive. That and he almost always has a giant pupil unlike a patch that can come off at certain times, that BIG pupil can freak folks out - if they even notice. The 2nd & 3rd graders at school of course did almost right away - but more along the lines of “Wow your pupils are weird” rather than teasing - not sure what a patch might have done.