Food Review: BIG BLOW (2000, United States)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Maker: Big Blow.
Home Country: United States?
Where procured: Dollar Store in Akron, OH.

Moving is kind of a traumatic experience. You realize in advance, of course, that you'll be throwing out many of your possessions, ranging from useless trash to things that might hold some personal relevance. You can plan all you want; deciding that everything in this column is to be kept, and everything in that column is to be thrown out, but ultimately, it's probably going to devolve into a shitstorm where something that was precious yesterday is getting tossed without second thought, just so you can keep trucking through the hideous crap you have to do on moving day. Regrettably, Big Blow was one of those casualties.

I and this bag of Big Blow have been through a lot. I came into its possession nine years ago at a Dollar Store in Ohio after a bout of hysterical laughter prompted me to lay down the $1.06 required for me to be its new owner. There was something about it, and not just the fact that it was named Big Blow. It promised 101 pieces, and the bloated little mascot with his sprig of orange hair and googly eyes was the perfect poker face for the product. "Did they know what they were doing when they named the gum BIG BLOW?" is the question of the day here. And the little googly-eyed guy seems to simultaneously be feigning ignorance AND be sayin' "Yeh-ey-yahhh- we know it's dirty!" kinda like the guy in DEADLY WEAPONS who says "Yeh-ey-yahhh- you got da job!" But, anyway, almost ten years later, I still don't know the answer to this question, and now I fear it will be like some ancient stone tablet, crumbling into dust, and indeed lost to time itself.

From 2000 to 2009, the bag of BIG BLOW was 'around.' It made whacky appearances when houseguests and visitors would ask for gum; these happenings were initially met with some degree of good humor, but after getting pulled out again and again and again, they began to be met with eye-rolling and disdain, which merely made them more pleasurable- more rib-ticklingly self-indulgent. At some point, the bag was actually opened, though I don't think any of the contents therein were actually consumed. Certainly not by me. In any event, Moving Day, 2009 rolls around, and I'm faced with some tough decisions. Three days earlier, it'd have been unthinkable, but the day of, I'm resigning myself to shedding a great many things, and what do you know, BIG BLOW ends up on the chopping block. The feverish moving mind is telling me BIG BLOW is a big part of my life. But the feverish moving mind is also telling me sometimes you have to purge the things you love in order not to be defined by your things. And maybe I don't want to be defined by just BIG BLOW anymore. 'Hey, who's he?' 'Oh, yeh, that's BIG BLOW guy.' Maybe we just don't want to be at that place forever.

Anyway, the moving mind has a lot of wisdom, but not a lot of restraint: so it tells me- maybe one last BIG BLOW- for the road. Sure. Why not. There's bound to be lots of preservatives in this. And you don't actually eat it, you just chew it. Undoing the wrapper, I'm noticing it's kind of firm. A little rigid. Yeah, well, you know what, a lot of gum is rigid until the saliva gets it going. Well, to make a long story short, that last BIG BLOW was not a great idea. I probably could have broken a tooth. It did not yield one iota, and remained as stiff as a little chunk of cement. Kind of like those ancient stone tablets I think I was talking about earlier. Then I threw out a bunch of other shit that was dear to me. But the trick is, if you do it all at once, maybe you won't remember. But there's no forgetting some things. Some things like BIG BLOW.

So four stars, good buddy. Surely, if nothing else, the nine years we spent together has earned you four stars.

-Sean Gill