BUBBLEGUM
I hate chewing gum. But when I was younger, I used to love Hubba Bubba. For those who haven’t had the pleasure, Hubba Bubba was the most flavourful chewing gum to ever be created, in my opinion. I’m salivating just writing about it. Hubba Bubba’s one sin was that it only lasted for about 45 glorious seconds before you were just chewing on rubber. It was so bad that it nearly negated the beautiful cornucopia of flavour that you just experienced. But that absence of flavour was a signal to spit out and pop in a new one. Start over again.
Hubba Bubba chewing gum came around in the late 70s, after a decade of lava lamps and shag carpets. The culture of the seventies was gritty, anti-establishment, and socially reflective. The music of this decade went through many changes before it came to be what we recognize today. Rock n’ Roll splintered into many subcategories, including hard rock, progressive rock, and psychedelic rock. Disco emerged mid-decade, and while today it may or may not be dead depending on who you ask, the foundations it laid, such as dance floor culture and the transformations of nightlife and fashion, are something that has survived the test of time.
The fashion of the 70s can still be seen on the streets in 2025, and while it’s true that fashion is cyclical and will always come back for seconds, not every style makes it through the wash without shrinkage. Animal prints, bell-bottoms, and hippie aesthetics are some styles that have come back in various ways to see the future. Beyond garments, the aesthetics of the 70s are still widely used in areas such as graphic design. Things like concert posters and graffiti are still emulated today.
A few years after my darling bubblegum of choice came on the scene, we would find ourselves in the 80s. Commercialism, neon lights, and excess. MTV officially launched in 1981 and set the tone for an entire generation. People gained access to cable TV and VHS, a combination which allowed for the beginnings of autonomy and privatization in entertainment as you could now tape your favourite show you watched in the 70s and see it anytime you wanted.
Where the music of the 70s was becoming more fragmented, in the 80s those genres began overlapping and crossing paths with one another. An example of this that I loved in my childhood almost twenty years after it came out was RUN DMC and Aerosmith’s - Walk This Way, 80s hip hop mixed with hard rock. To this day, it slaps.
The youth were a large demographic in the 80s, and the video games of the 70s like Pong were left in the dust as arcades opened and home consoles began popping up in stores. Pretty soon video game culture was off to a rolling start.
By the time the 90s rolled around, all of the ingredients were in the pot and all that was left to do was to turn the heat up and let it all marinate. The video games of the 70s which evolved into the arcades of the 80s became the PlayStations and GameBoys of the nineties. Fully realized and in three dimensions. Gaming wasn’t the only area that received an upgrade, a lot of the technologies of the time were moving from analog to digital, either in compatibility or social integration as was the case with vinyl records and cassette tapes of the 80s. With the prevalence of the Walkman and home stereo system, more and more people opted to buy CDs.
As hip hop entered its 2nd wave, grunge and alt rock also entered the scene. Where the 70’s saw genres splintering away from one another, and the 80’s saw them collaborate, the 90’s was a time where genres and subcultures shared the spotlight. You could be a Nirvana fan or a Tupac fan and be just as “90’s” as the other.
The final nail in the coffin, however, was the internet becoming accessible to everyone. This spawned AOL chatrooms and online forums before social media was even a thing. It was the renaissance of a digital age. The music, movies, and TV shows everyone enjoyed all ended up on the internet, video games quickly became available to play online with people you had never met.
As we passed through Y2K and entered a new millennium, the 90’s moved forward seamlessly. All the cultural pastimes were carried forward as the internet became better and more high-speed, computers improved, and social media was unleashed upon the world. Somewhere between the year 2000 and 2010, the figurative bubble popped, and ever since, we have been chewing away at something that will never taste as good as it once did. The flavours are familiar but not what they once were. As we cross the middle of this decade, I believe it may be time to refresh our taste buds and pop in a new piece.
