Passover’s coming. I can tell by the special section in my local supermarket which now displays matzohs, macaroons, gefilte fish, horseradish and…Bazooka bubble gum. For the second or third year in a row, for a limited time, I can purchase a 50-count box of the rock-hard, fluorescent pink epoxy squares I remember from my childhood.
However, these are apparently a special Pesach edition, because the box and the comic tucked around each is in Hebrew.
I’m no biblical scholar, but I did watch The Ten Commandments several times, and nowhere did I see any reference to Moses or the Egyptians blowing bubbles. Anyone have a clue?
I would guess that it just happens to be kosher (or meet the standards for the particular dietary restrictions surrounding Pesach). (It may have something to do with the sweetener, as I know that pop has to avoid certain sweeteners at this time of year.)
The Kosher mart and Delicatessan includes the following items (after announcing that the kosher Coke and Canada Dry products have arrived):
These are Bazookas made kosher and intended mainly for sale in Israel (hence the Hebrew language on everything), but are readily available to Jewish communities in the USA as well.
It’s not like Bazooka or “Bazooka Joe” is specifically Jewish, Israelis/Jews just happen to be another market that the company making Bazooka wishes to exploit.
In my experience, people will eat (and buy) things on Passover that they would never consider for the rest of the year. This of course includes matzah and gefilte fish – I certainly never eat them at other times during the year although my dad does. But the Kosher For Passover food associated is something to behold – chocolate covered orange peel, chocolate dipped matzah, coconut macaroons (especially the vile slimy Manischewitz ones in the vacuum sealed tin), very greasy potato chips, marshmallows, coconut marshmallows, bad mandelbrot made from matzah meal. This also extends to the Manischewitz/Rokeach baking kits, for making things like latkes, KFP brownies, KFP cakes, including an aluminum pan so you don’t have to kasher a regular baking pan.
Bazooka, along with those Elite strawberry hard candies and the gel-filled fruit candies, certainly belong in this category.
Thanks for the input, all. I just found it odd that of all the venues the makers of Bazooka would choose to increase their sales, they decided to target Jewish bubble-gum chewers. Crazy?. Crazy like a fox; I bought two boxes.
During Passover, there are certain foods that we’re not supposed to eat. These are chametz. There are other foods, which while not chametz, could be confused with chametz. These are kitniyot. The relevant food here is corn. Technically allowable, Ashkenazic Jews (Jews of European heritage) have a tradition of not eating corn products during Passover. So Coke, and a bunch of other companies temporarily switch from high fructose corn syrup to cane sugar.
Checking the back of a box of Bazooka-kosher for Passover, I find that it includes “Glucose syrup” and is “kitniot free”.
As Bazooka does not spoil, this particular box has lasted me several years.
My problem is that I cannot read the cursive Hebrew used in the included comics. I can look at the pictures, but have no clue what Bazooka Joe and his pals are saying.
Rein’s Deli in Vernon Connecticut always has Hebrew Bazooka gum at the cash register. Year 'round.
I got some for our daughter, MilliCal, who was totally stumped by the weird writing. But then she asked me to translate, and I had to adfmit that I couldn’t http://www.reinsdeli.com/index.html
Of course, no matter how small a piece you take, you still get all the flavour.
I just recently decided to declare that I didn’t like borscht, after 30+ years of pretending otherwise at holiday family dinners.
We do this because, as DocCathode pointed out, so much of what we normally eat isn’t allowed during Passover. Many prepared food or candies might be labelled kosher, but they aren’t kosher for Passover because they include kitniyot. Or we might usually buy regular national brands of things like potato chips, but we can’t do that during Passover, so we buy Manischewitz (or other brand specializing in kosher food) ones.
And then, of course, there’s tradition- Jews who grow up in observant households usually have some particular food that it “wouldn’t be Passover without”, sort of like how it “wouldn’t be Christmas” for some people without eggnog or sugar cookies or whatever.
