Bubble Gum: The First Taste of Capitalism

How "rotten capitalism" and gambling swept over our school in Moscow.

I spent a good portion of my childhood behind the Iron Curtain. The curtain did not lift often to let people, ideas, or goods in or out. As an exception, the 1980s Olympics were held in Moscow. This was out of character for the Communist Party to allow that. I was too young to watch the Olympics, but people talked about that magical time for many years afterward.  

But generally, the curtain was impenetrable to ideas of democracy and the free market (or, as the adults in my life used to say, “the rotten capitalism”), which meant that anything made outside of the USSR had a tough time making it in. 

When I was in middle school, the curtain began to lift. The “roaring 90s” swept over the post-Soviet space, with the intoxicating chaos of a pseudo-free market (which felt more like a black market that took over the entire economy)

For my little sister and me, the first taste of capitalism was bubble gum. For whatever reason, Soviet food manufacturing never made chewing gum that you could blow into bubbles. We had one state-produced brand in about six flavors.

(Image generated with the help of Bing AI)

And now, my grandfather found an outdoor market where he could buy American-made bubble gum, along with pirated VHS tapes. We learned to blow up the most obscene giant bubbles; we felt like we were characters in a Holywood movie. That was highly disapproved of, and we even got punished for blowing bubbles at school.  That was the guilty pleasure for school bathrooms and playgrounds. 

But the best part was that the bubble gum wrappers had cartoons printed on them. The mysterious characters we were starting to learn about, like Donald Duck and Tom and Jerry. The gum wrappers quickly became the school hallway currency. The more wrappers you collect, the higher your social status.  

That led to gambling. And this is how it went -  each kid would put a wrapper face down on the floor to make a little pile. And then everyone took turns slapping them hard. Any wrappers that turned face up were the winnings. And the game kept going until the wrapper wealth was fully redistributed.

Oh, if only our communist forefathers knew how quickly we were becoming as rotten as the capitalism that brought us the bubble gum.