I Tried Burger King’s Crispy Taco …

… and I didn’t hate it. That much.

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Nine MORE Insanely Violent Pro Wrestling Matches!

A heartfelt celebration of the carnival of cruelty and the pageantry of pain, complete with attempted murder in front of a live audience, Japanese people hitting each other with household goods and enough animal abuse to give Ingrid Newkirk five heart attacks in succession. 

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo__X

WrestleMania 32 is just a few days away, and on paper at least, it looks to be the weakest WM card in at least a decade. Triple H taking on Roman Reigns? Glorified backyard wrestler John Moxley against former UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar? The Undertaker's 80-year-old-looking ass taking on Shane McMahon and his inability to throw authentic looking punches? That's supposed to be your marquee PPV for the entire year? 

Alas, while WWE's biggest show of the year is almost certain to disappoint, if you've got a hankering for some sublime in-ring carnage, all you have to do is point your clicker on over to the YouTubes and the DailyMotions and you'll bear witness to heaps of fundamentally absurd pro 'rasslin goodness. Sure, we've already covered some of the proletariat theatre's more befuddling and stomach-churning moments, but considering the sheer volume of wrestling madness out there (I could fill up an entire site with nothing but the batshit crazy things promotions in Japan are doing), I reckoned it was worth our collective whiles to trudge through the mass media abyss to unearth a few more sports-entertainment incidents that'll make you wonder why the divine being of your choosing hasn't smat the holy shit out of all of humanity by now. 

How inhumanely violent and/or idiotic can wrestling be, you may be pondering? Well, whatever your preconceived notions may be, I assure you - the bottom of the barrel is much, much worse than you'd ever liked to have known. 

So strap on your seat belts and turn off the part of your brain responsible for empathy, folks: it's time to revel in the absolute sickest, strangest and sociopathic recesses of the squared circle...

#09

New Jack exacts revenge on an old ECW adversary by literally trying to murder him in public

You really can't talk about absurd violence in professional wrestling without bringing up one Jerome Young, a "talented" grappler from Atlanta who spent a majority of his career wrestling under the ring name New Jack. Never really a performer too keen on the whole "skill" and "athleticism" stuff, his shtick primarily consisted of mercilessly pummeling the crap out of foes with sundry blunt objects while "Natural Born Killaz" played on a loop for 20 minutes. While New Jack - believe it or not, immortalized in the song "El Scorcho" by Weezer - has no doubt severely injured many an opponent (among other highlights, he legitimately beat a man half to death with a baseball bat, severed an artery on an underage wrestler and was actually arrested for stabbing another man in the middle of the match), probably the closest he has ever gotten to actually murdering another person on camera came at Xtreme Professional Wrestling's 2002 event Freefall. There, he was involved in a scaffold match with Vic Grimes, an old ECW chum who severely injured New Jack during the infamous botched "Danbury Fall" in 2000 (which, it should probably be noted, resulted in New Jack being literally brain damaged and permanently blinded in his right eye.) Sensing now was his time to exact revenge, New Jack proceeded to launch Grimes 30 feet off the scaffold above the ring in their XPW tilt, sending his follically-challenged adversary crashing through several tables, bouncing off the ring rope and nearly being decapitated in the process. Rather than downplay the incident as an accident as would any non-brain-damaged sort, New Jack was far from shy about telling anyone who would listen that he did it on purpose - going as far as to state that he actually was trying to kill Grimes in the 2005 documentary Forever Hardcore. 

#08

CZW ... where weed whackers are the biggest box office draw!

After Extreme Championship Wrestling went under in 2001, there was a big dearth in the North American garbage wrestling scene. Almost immediately, the northeastern indie promotion Combat Zone Wrestling rose to fill the void, complete with annual outdoor "deathmatch tournaments" that looked virtually indistinguishable from your garden-variety backyard 'rasslin set-up. With a cast of wrestlers somehow even less physically talented as ECW stalwarts New Jack and The Sandman, CZW in its early days had to really go for broke with the predetermined mayhem. Sure, we've seen barbed wire and fluorescent light tubes a million times, but say, have you ever seen a wrestler go after an opponent gasoline-powered lawn care equipment before? Such was the catalyst for the grand finale of CZW's first-ever Ultraviolent Tournament of Death in 2002, in which promotion hero Wifebeater (no, seriously, that was his name) broke out a weed whacker to finish off "Madman" Nick Pondo. The disturbing publicity ploy worked, however, as the wild and woolly incident immediately became an Internet hit and more or less put CZW on the map. Indeed, the iconic moment has more or less come to embody CZW as a whole, with the weed-eater finish being implemented time and time and time again ever since. 

#07 

CZW ... where hypodermic needles are fair game!

Of course, you can only watch people have their skin shredded off with lawn maintenance implements so many times before you are desensitized. With the weed whacker fu quickly losing its novelty, Combat Zone Wrestling had to come up with something fresh to freak out the masses - and since this is an industry where the working conditions routinely call for employees to be set on fire to earn a paycheck, I guess you could say the standard for shock had been raised and considerably. At 2009's Tournament of Death 8, grappler Thumbtack Jack (guess what his favorite office supply is?) decided to try something a little different in a contest against CZW owner DJ Hyde. In a "Jack in the Box" death match, Thumbtack brutalized his foe with the usual assortment of plunder - cinder blocks, glass window panes, your typical fare, really. But towards the end of the bout, however, he decided to break out a foreign object rarely seen in professional wrestling matches - a goddamn hypodermic needle, which he proceeded to shove through his opponent's cheek. Needless to say, the gruesome spot definitely made an impact on even CZW's hardened hardcore 'rasslin audience, with the medical instruments being trotted out by Thumbtack Jack in several subsequent matchups - including one bout where he decided to jam a syringe ALL all the way through both of his foe's cheeks and yet another where he stabbed his adversary with a hypodermic needle right on the sole of his foot. 

#06

Big Japan ... home of the ever-popular Crocodile Death Match!

Perhaps due to excess radiation levels, wrestling in the Land of the Rising Sun has always been much, MUCH weirder than 'rasslin in the states. Interestingly, this manifests itself both in more realistic strong-style bouts where the wrestlers more or less beat the dog shit out of each other for real AND absurdist, self-reflexive comedy matches that are essentially satires - if not outright condemnation - of the pro wrestling biz as a whole. And then, there are bouts like this 1998 Big Japan Wrestling contest, which manages to be both irresponsibly violent and hilariously idiotic. For the most part, this bout featuring Shadow WX and Mitsuhiro Matsunaga - the latter kinda' looks like old-school WWF grappler The Ultimate Warrior, if he didn't take steroids and his diet consisted primarily of Hot Pockets - is  your standard death match. We've got people being crushed on barbed-wire wrapped boards, dudes being choked with baseball bats and a real crowd-winner involving a body slam onto a bed of razor-sharp spikes, but it's not until after the final bell sounds that things get really out there. That's when the refs put up a mesh barricade around the ring and the bout's loser, WX, is forced to wrestle a goddamn alligator (yeah, they billed it as crocodile, but we all know better.) Of course, it's an awfully petite alligator, all things considered, and WX - has no problem wrangling his cold-blooded challenger back into his container. The best thing about the match, however, is the palpable embarrassment displayed by WX, who has a look on his face like "this is the stupidest shit I've ever had to do in my entire life" throughout the whole regrettable affair. 

#05

DDT presents the world's first Silent Match!

There is a fine line between idiotic and brilliant, and Japanese indie comedy fed Dramatic Dream Team (DDT) straddles the line better than anybody. It's kind of hard to tell whether the company is just plain offensive and stupid or if it is supposed to be some kind of sly commentary on the general offensiveness and stupidity of pro wrestling as a whole. While DDT has featured countless ideas that could be construed as both unfathomably stupid and subversively clever over the years - among other knee-slappers, one of their top performers for years has been an inflatable sex doll and they have the proud distinction of holding the first ever "gay or straight" match in the history of pro wrestling (which was essentially an "I Quit" match, only you had to make your opponent confess he was a homosexual) - but for my money, no match embodies the dual retardedness and genius of the promotion than the infamous "silence match" between NOSAWA and Muscle Sakai from 2007. What's a "silence match," you may be wondering? Well, it's a match where the competitors start off with three points, and every time they make an audible noise, they lose one. As a result, we get some truly inspired spots in this epic clash, including several moves performed in slow-motion, a mid-bout smoke break, brazen product placement for coconut water galore, a sequence where one of the wrestlers loses a point because he screams after his foe pinches his ass and the clincher - and quite possibly the greatest finish in any wrestling match ever: a grappler being disqualified for illegal flatulence. Forget Rauschenberg and Warhol and the rest of those dweebs; as far as I'm concerned, this is the real zenith of post-modern art. 

#04

Japan ... where inanimate objects wrestle, and sometimes hold championship belts!

Throughout the history of pro wrestling two pieces of hardware - ladders and tables - have played pivotal roles in some of the pseudo-sport's most iconic moments. So, leave it to the ultra obscure Japanese promotion Saitama Pro Wrestling Company (SPWC) to give the oft-utilized instruments the venue to shine without all those sweaty meatheads around to soak up the spotlight that I believe we can all agree is rightly theirs to begin with. It's not a terribly exciting match, by any means (in fact, the whole shebang is over and done with in less than a minute) and one can't help but feel a little underwhelmed by the competitors - a mini-step ladder and not one of those 20-foot metal monstrosities and a table that, if I didn't know any better, was decorated in such a way as to mask the fact there may have been someone underneath it moving it around. Still, the energy from the crowd makes this nonetheless one of the most surreal matches (or condemnations) you'll ever see in the wild and woolly world of pro 'rasslin. Still a little too high brow for you? Well, you can always fire up the Internet and check out some of the DDT Ironman Heavymetalweight contests, which includes a downright indecipherable deathmatch parody in which a half dozen competitors (one of whom is inexplicably dressed like Ryu from Street Fighter II) job to the company's defending strap holder ... a six-foot tall ladder. 

#03

Four words: Apartment Complex Pro Wrestling!

DDT is a company known for its, well, experimental, model. In addition to the kooky publicity stunts we've already drudged up (Home Depot supplies as champions, matches where the loser has to publicly announce he's gay, etc.), the promotion is also renowned for its extremely in-depth, pseudo-storyline-driven "matches" that take place well beyond the confines of the wrestling ring. In simpler terms? A wrestler shows up at a random place with a film crew, he tries to procure a service - like, oh say, visit a campground - only to have a million billion heels attack him in a long, winding single take movie/bout that often exceeds an hour in length. In 2011, DDT decided to embark upon their most ambitious - and perhaps, unintentionally brilliant - anti-match with an hour and a half long opus that saw star grappler Kota Ibusha (who, to those not in the know, truly is one of the best wrestlers on the planet), attempting to purchase a rental space (why he's dressed in his ring regalia while apartment hunting, I can't tell you.) For the next 90 minutes, he floats from floor to floor, encountering - and then beating the living dog shit - out of a whole host of bizarre characters, including, but not limited to, an S&M gimp we meet humping a birdhouse, a kickboxer who has tennis balls scattered all over his floor and probably not-of-age pron posted all over his walls and a guy whose sole possessions consist of inflatable pool toys and half-empty pots of water. It's even funnier once you realize that all of these wackos are actually pro wrestlers on the DDT roster - something tells me that you'd never see John Cena or Triple H agree to pretend to be homosexual lovers or have Roman candles launched at them for the sake of a comedic bit that's really more Jackass than Ring of Honor, which ultimately, makes the entire package all the more satisfying. Oh, and just wait until you get to the part with the impromptu watermelon eating-contest, the two-on-one brawl with the egg-throwing meth-manufacturing twins and the concluding rooftop battle, which may very well consitute the single greatest backyard wrestling match ever recorded on tape.

#02

Big Japan ... home of the Grocery Store Death Match!

Sometimes, the squared circle is just too dang restrictive when it comes to absurd violence possibilities. Sure, you can throw a lot of weaponry into the mix, but at the end of the day, you are still stuck pretending to beat the shit out of each other surrounded by four ring posts and a bunch of rope. To really maximize the creative destruction, you've sometimes got to step outside the confines of the arena and turn the boring, banal real world we all know and love into a smorgasbord of unusual brutality. Hence, the premise of this infamous 1995 Big Japan bout featuring up-and-comer Kendo Nagasaki doing battle against no less than four veteran challengers. Sure, things start off normal (well, normal enough by Japanese standards), with the wrestlers duking it out in makeshift ring outside the entrance of a grocery store. Well, as anyone who has ever watching 'rasslin before can tell you, the shenanigans most certainly will not remain locked to the ring (here, just a rain tarp surrounded by chicken wire.) About three minutes into the contest, the competitors are already brawling in the audience and whacking each other with chairs, and then, the fruit stand fucking gets it. Things only get weirder from there, with Pepsi cans becoming weapons of mass destruction, a wrestler having his face slammed into raw chicken and a segment containing quite possibly the only instance of a figure four leglock being applied in a bakery in recorded history. Oh, and you're going to love the part with the projectile hot dog cart - it's a real crowd-pleaser, to say the least. As asinine as it all is, probably the weirdest thing about the whole affair is the post-editing, which includes the use of this really out-of-place melodramatic moments and a few fourth-wall breaking segments where the action stops and we see wrestlers being treated for their injuries. And after all the mayhem and madness - including a very Platoon-esque sequence where the camera surveys all the broken glass and crates the wrestlers created - all of the competitors drop the violent madmen gimmick and act chummy as can be, even helping one another shave their eyebrows. Maybe it's a super-duper subtle allegory for the relationships between the U.S. and Japan in the wake of Hiroshima or something - 20 years later, I'm still not sure how any of us are supposed to interpret this stuff. 

#01

The first ... and hopefully only ... Alive & Dead Food Death Match!

Linguistically, we all acknowledge the term "death match" is a misnomer. Yes, they are indeed bouts in which performers intentionally mutilate and maim each other, but unless New Jack is one of the participants, I think it's safe to say that attempted homicide is never the core objective of the contests. That's what makes this 2010 tag team hootenanny between Jun Kasai and the Great Sasuke against the Brahman Brothers (the guys who pelted Kota Ibusha with ketchup in the Apartment Complex Death Match discussed above) such a hideously intriguing prospect - it's probably the only match out there that actually DOES involve the mass killing of living creatures as a part of the match stipulations. One part screwball comedy and one part Cannibal Holocaust, the thirty minute or so bout includes the use of several sea creatures as weapons; there's a spot where a snapping turtle bites one of the competitor's noses and a pretty gosh-dang hilarious bit where another performer smacks the shit out of another with a live octopus. Granted, your mileage may vary on the entertainment merits of such madcap mayhem, especially if you are one of those PETA-types that think you can't even sneeze on a kitten without committing a capital offense. That said, by the time the competitors start throwing flaming fish heads at one another and stomping live lobsters and lizards to death in the ring, you really, really have to start questioning the sanity of the Japanese citizenry. Once a fairly accessible bout on the YouTubes, finding the infamous Alive & Dead Food Death Match nowadays is a real chore, and it's pretty much impossible to stream anywhere online (since, in the wake of a bill authorized by Barack Obama in 2010, it's potentially material considered obscene under U.S. law.) Having now taken a near-urban legend status, this bizarre beyond interpretation throwdown remains one of the most talked about - yet rarely seen - "death matches" in the annals (anals?) of professional wrestling. 

And yeah, until we start actually killing people on purpose for our amusement, it's about as sadistic and unsettling as wrestling is going to get, I reckon. 

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B-MOVIE REVIEW: “Million Dollar Mystery” (1987)

Have you ever wondered just how good a movie made by a trash bag manufacturer can be? Well … wonder no more, fellas. 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo___X

Back in the 1980s -- no matter how stupid the premise -- it seemed like film studios had a hard time saying “no” to any movie script. This, of course, is the same decade that gave us “Megaforce,” “Leonard Part 6” and a Superman movie featuring both a robot devil woman and Richard Pryor visibly high on cocaine in every scene. Apparently, the producers figured there was no such thing as “too much” for movie-going masses in Reagan’s America. That philosophy, along with the aforementioned cocaine, explains how we wound up with big budget adaptations of both “Howard the Duck” and the motherfucking “Garbage Pail Kids,” I’d presume.

Which brings us to a guy by the name of Dino De Laurentiis. One of the most iconic producers in the history of Hollywood, he began his career by helping import world cinema classics by the likes of Fellini, Mario Bava and King Vidor to the U.S. Then, he just went off the deep end in the 1970s, alternately producing some really great flicks (like “Serpico,” “The Serpent’s Egg” and the first “Death Wish” flick) along with some really misguided, bloated misfires (most notably the 1976 “King Kong” remake, but also, the notorious slave drama “Mandingo.”) By the early 1980s, he was stuck producing mostly B-level genre-fare, which included some respectable offerings (“Halloween II” and the first “Conan” movie) and an absolute shit-ton of crappy Stephen King adaptations.

It can be argued that Dino hit his career nadir in 1987, when his distributing company released one of the absolute weirdest concept movies of the decade … and considering the out-there shit that DID prove lucrative at the box office in the ‘80s, that’s saying something.

At heart, “Million Dollar Mystery” is little more than a brazen rip-off of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World,” only without the appeal of a star-studded cast. But much more than that, it’s one of the most mystifyingly bad marketing ploys in mainstream film history. You see, the title “Million Dollar Mystery” is no joke -- the producers of the film actually DID offer $1 million to viewers who could solve a puzzle posed at the end of the movie. And helping put up the financing for the flick -- and with a premise like that, who wouldn’t? -- was the Glad trash bag company. So, yes, this is a film that LITERALLY had rubbish built into its celluloid.

So, yeah, it's pretty much the exact same thing as "Fury Road."

The film begins with Tom Bosley (when THAT’S the biggest name in the cast, you know you’re working with scant materials) hiding out in a safe-house, stuffing wads and wads of cash into … you guessed it, Glad trash bags. After that, he hightails it to a hole-in-the-wall diner, which just so happens to be populated by the following: an angry family complete with a dad with a mullet haircut, a rock and roll dude and his blonde bimbo harem, a just-married nerd couple that want to bone bad (the dude is played by the guy who voiced Mandark on “Dexter’s Laboratory”) and an old cowboy fellow and his … sister? Wife? Girlfriend? Daughter? Honestly, I‘m not sure what the relationship there is supposed to be. Anyhoo, Bosley flirts with the ginger waitress for a bit, then he suffers a heart attack and keels over. However, before he punches his ticket to that great Mattress Firm in the sky, he lets all of the patrons know that he’s scattered $4 million in cash throughout this great county o’ ours. And the first cool million? Apparently, it’s located somewhere in “the city of the bridge.”

Oh, by the way, Tom Bosley is actually a bit of stunt casting here, since he portrayed a character known as “The Man From Glad” in a series of old school trash bag commercials. Forget being remembered as Howard Cunningham or a Tony Award winning stage actor -- this dude will forever be linked to plastic sanitation consumer goods in my mind.

From there, we’re introduced to the tertiary members of the cast. There’s a duo of bumbling federal investigators hot on the trail of Bosley’s loot and a Vietnam veteran commando-for-hire named Buzzard. Following a way-too-long sequence in which a pick-up truck rolls down a plateau, the family from earlier drives their station wagon into a retention pond … which nearby lab techs note is actually a toxic waste pool. As their Volvo disintegrates in the caustic chemical (apparently, it can depressurize metal but doesn‘t do shit to human skin tissue),  one of the lab workers decides to drink the stuff, and automatically turns retarded. Interestingly enough, the character is referred to as “the toxic werewolf” in the film’s closing credits.

After that, the rocker dude and his comely lasses get arrested, while the family sans a ride gets a lift from an RV commandeered by two pro wrestlers pretending to be evil Ruskies and Iranian sympathizers (an oblique nod to the infamous Iron Sheik/Hacksaw Jim Duggan weed incident, perhaps?) After that, the extremely nerdy (and horny) couple try to make the sign of the three-legged Armenian mud weasel, but since they can’t figure out how a Murphy bed works, they just run around in fast-forward mode for a few minutes. In the pokey, the rock and roller dude and his lady pals trick an officer into doing a series of horrific impersonations (complete with arguably the worst Woody Allen imitation you’ve ever heard) so they can escape.

Strangely enough, all of the treasure seekers wind up at the secret location (a pipe bridge out in the desert) at the same time. The clues are written on a few eggs, but since one of the eggs got dropped, the hunters are left with an incomplete puzzle piece. After nearly plummeting to his death, one of the treasure chasers notices something wedged inside an actual pipe near the bridge. As it turns out, it’s a briefcase filled with one million dollars! But, uh, a strong wind picks up, and all of the cash flies off into a ravine. Thankfully, there is a SECOND one million dollar briefcase located elsewhere, an enigmatic clue in the briefcase reminds us.

It's a LOT queasier when you realize a stunt like this KILLED
one of the actors in the movie.

From there, its subplot city. The federal investigators show up and mill about for awhile, then the local
police arrive and an overweight female cop gets stuck in a hole in the bridge because, shit, that’s funny. A woman being a police officer … har-har! We meet a new character -- a private investigator -- whose scenes are filmed in a black and white filter. Eventually, he sets his own office on fire because he is a nitwit … such highbrow humor, I know.

So, Buzzard attempts to hotwire a truck, can’t, and decides to jack a fire truck instead. The family steals a rental car (which, for some reason, speaks Spanish) and their kids decide to team up with the pro ‘rasslers following a hammy, forced anti-materialist spiel (played entirely for laughs, of course.) The rock and roller’s blondes pull the old “American Graffiti” trick on a few squad cars, and a bunch of Boy Scouts watch the nerd couple bump uglies in the bushes. The blondes, some old fellows and the now corrupted local po-po decide to join forces, and they arrive at the second hidden money site -- a random houseboat -- just in time to watch all the money get chewed up in a paper shredder. There’s also a great bit with the money-hunters discovering the loot inside a fish tank. How’d they manage to keep the bills from getting soggy, you may be wondering? Well, you will never have to worry about the money you stole from the U.S. government ever getting damp when you stow it away in aquarium displays, thanks to the magic of Glad-Lock trash bags.

But wouldn’t you goddamn know it, there just so happens to be a THIRD million dollar briefcase, hidden somewhere in the London Bridge (which is actually in Arizona, in case you didn’t know.) Next up, we see the federal investigators attempt to jack civilian aircraft (the joke is, everybody onboard has a gun and is secretly part of some sting operation), and the cops decide to steal a tour bus filled with Asians (although I spotted a couple of Italians near the back of the Greyhound.) Some motorbikes and even a hot air balloon gets stolen, while the nerds engage in more horny shenanigans. Following a long motorcycle chase in which soccer balls play a prominent role, the little kid discovers some mysterious markings on the bridge, revealing the location of the third briefcase. Of course, the hot air balloon owner decides to yank  the money away from him, and in his getaway, he accidentally unlatches the briefcase and watches all of his dough flutter away. The impersonator cop then imitates Bill Cosby (it’s every bit as awful as you’d imagine it to be) and all of the money-seekers start swimming after a boat that floats by called “Bridge Over Troubled Waters.” Then, the federal agents speak DIRECTLY to the audience, letting them know there’s one more million dollar briefcase out there. As the credits roll, they talk about Styrofoam ice chests and cherries -- completely worthless banter, or subtle clues about the location of the hidden million? As it turns out … yeah, it’s actually just worthless banter.

According to the Internet, the unquestionable repository of knowledge that it is, the theatrical version of the film actually had a completely different end credits sequence, in which the federal investigators gave out clues pertinent to the location of the real-world hidden loot. As it turns out, the million dollar prize was hidden inside the bridge of the Statue of Liberty’s nose -- as determined by some dame out in Bakersfield, who was then given pretty much the film’s entire box office take as part of the contest/marketing stunt. On a side note, some theaters supposedly handed out a couple of mock, promotional dollars for the film, featuring Dino’s mug in lieu of a deceased president or Benny Franklin. My goodness, the absurd amount of actual money I’d pay to get one of those on my bookcase.

Despite producing the second and third “Evil Dead” movies, Dino never really had another “hit” movie after “Million Dollar Mystery.” During the ‘90s, he was relegated to making stuff like “Rumplestiltskin” and the ironically titled “Unforgettable,” and it really wasn’t until the early 2000s, when his production company took over the reins of the Hannibal franchise, that it seemed like Dino’s fortunes were reversing. And then, he dropped dead in 2010.

Unsurprisingly, the film was a critical and financial flop. Despite taking $10 million to make, the film barely recouped a million in ticket sales; this more or less ended the career of director Richard Fleischer, whose resume up to that point -- having directed “Fantastic Voyage” and “Soylent Green,” among other works -- was very impressive. Even worse, this movie KILLED Dar Robinson, the man universally recognized as one of the greatest stuntmen in Hollywood history. Considering the ungodly damage this movie wreaked (for heaven’s sake, even the Glad brand itself got bought out shortly after the film’s release!) maybe we ought to start referencing it as “The Conqueror” of the ‘80s, no?

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Hubba Bubba Dr. Pepper Bubblegum!

Have you ever been sipping on a Dr. Pepper and thought to yourself, "man, sometimes I just want to chew this stuff instead of drink it?" Well, it looks like Wrigley's has finally answered your prayers...

Let's talk about the art of criticism for a moment. Social commentary is pretty easy, since everybody has an opinion on culture and politics. Literature, film and music are also pretty easy to critique, as are video games, food and drink. Other things however, are a bit more challenging to review -- like, say, pens or hotel rooms. I mean, yeah, you can probably iron out a couple of paragraphs if you really apply yourself, but in general, we have so few experiences with such things (compared to watching movies or eating out at restaurants, anyway) that comparatively ranking those experiences is difficult.

Which brings me to one of my tallest orders to date as a subversive anti-consumerist satirist fan of mass manufactured culture. How do you, precisely, review bubblegum?

Over the years, I've probably chewed tens of thousands of pieces of gum. Hell, I may even be up to the sextuple-digits by now, actually. As much experience as I have had with the semi-foodstuffs, however, I have yet to really develop anything even remotely resembling a qualitative personal gauge for what makes gum superior or inferior to others. Surely, you cannot just rely upon simple flavor here -- you also have to figure in things like the duration of the flavor, how long it takes before the gum becomes too soggy to thoroughly chew and of course, its overall mouthfeel (if it has a gel center a'la Freshen Up, that's obviously automatic bonus points.) And that's not even accounting for variations in texture -- can you really objectively compare the flavor of  your basic stick of Juicy Fruit to that of a Hobgoblin-themed gumball, anyway? With all of those factors taken into consideration, maybe it actually isn't surprising why I haven't come up with a ranking system yet.

And then, along comes something like Hubba Bubba's Dr. Pepper-flavored bubblegum, which makes you reevaluate your entire philosophical outlook on things. What an amazing corporate syncretism going on here, no? It's Wrigley's meets Cadburry Schweppes (by way of corporate spinoff) -- it's not quite the Mountain Dew-flavored Oreos I have always dreamed of, but as far as cross-promotional Frankenfoods go, I'd say this one is definitely one of the finest I have seen in a while.

Of course, this isn't the first time somebody tried to convert Dr. Pepper into gum.Way back in the 1980s, the popular beverage was transformed into a fancy bubblegum with a fancy, quasi-liquid core. Ostensibly, that meant you could feasibly chew and drink the product simultaneously, although from what I recollect, the molten gunk in the middle didn't taste all that much like any kind of soda ... unless there is a cola out there somewhere that tastes like melted confectioner sugar.

This newfangled gum, I am afraid, is sans that semi-liquid gimmick. Admittedly, that's a pretty big letdown, seeing as how synthetic soda flavoring technology has had to have certainly made leaps and bounds since the Reagan years. Alas, as its own individual product, I reckon this here Hubba Bubba/Dr. Pepper chimera (henceforth referred to as BubbaPepper) isn't too bad.

As soon as you open the wrapper, the first thing you are going to notice is the smell. Give the engineers at Wrigley's credit, because the scent of this stuff is almost indistinguishable from that of the actual cola. Go ahead, crack open one of these bad boys in a crowded room, and I guarantee you someone will soon be asking if someone spilled a Dr. Pepper on the floor.

Probably the biggest problem with the gum, however, is its appearance. I guess the brown hue is a nice ode to the color of the beverage, but I am definitely not a fan of the ridged, obese Tootsie Roll aesthetic. I know it sounds like me trying to be funny, but it actually DOES start smelling like a Tootsie Roll after awhile. Yeah, at first, you may be smelling nothing but soda, but once the Tootsie Roll thought enters your head, there's no way you will be able to smell anything other than gooey chocolate. It's just like that dress meme that took the Internet by storm earlier this year -- as soon as you see black and blue (Tootsie Roll smell), you'll never be able to go back to seeing white and gold (Dr. Pepper smell.)

As far as the product's taste is concerned, it's all right. To me, it didn't really have that much of a Dr. Pepper vibe; I mean, a slight hint was palpable, but it was fairly faint, and after about five minutes of chewing, the flavoring seems to dissipate altogether. Maybe it's just the power of suggestion, but I started getting a Tootsie Roll taste as well after a few gnashes -- can anybody else out there who has tried this stuff go to bat for me, or am I just flat out going bonkers here?

It really seems to be a golden era for novelty gum right now. In addition to the Dr. Pepper blend, Hubba Bubba has also released a Hawaiian Punch-flavored tie-in, while other manufacturers have releases gums that (allegedly) taste like, among other things, Sour Patch Kids and assorted Starburst candies.

At the end of the day, though, I guess I just can't give you folks a solid interpretation of this stuff. Sure, I can give you kind of an overview of what the the product looks, smells and tastes like, but I really can't describe to you how the gum feels swirling around in your mouth, or the rubbery friction that results from pounding the gum between your back row bicuspids. Ultimately, this is just the kind of stuff you are going to have to try and dictate for yourself -- and seriously, if you dictate anything other than "Tootise Roll," you better shoot me a damned e-mail.

Lastly, I just wanted to comment on how much of a joy it was to see the "mouth-wrapper-trash-can" sequential pictograph above. It does the heart good to know that, more than a decade after I graduated high school, today's youths are still bearing witness to the same text-less, anti-littering hieroglyphics that my generation grew up with. Dr. Pepper flavored things may be scrumptious, but even that doesn't hold a candle to the sweet taste of continuity...

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