Penny (1 cent) Gum Ball Machines

This is the place for general and miscellaneous posts on topics which might extend past the boundaries of any specific region.

Moderator: Groceteria

Post Reply
Jason B.
Veteran
Posts: 206
Joined: 10 Aug 2006 02:43

Penny (1 cent) Gum Ball Machines

Post by Jason B. »

Does anyone remember the last time you could buy a supermarket item for just one cent? As late as 1979, I remember buying penny gum balls from a dispenser in the front of the Lucky supermarket on Pacific Avenue in Livermore, Calif. (not long before it closed in March 1980). They were small gum balls in bright colors. (I'm not sure how they worked out the sales tax on a one-cent item.)

Chewing gum, of course, has a special role in supermarket history. I believe that a package of Wrigley's chewing gum was the first item to bear a "universal price code" (UPC) in the United States, in the mid-1970s.
See: http://www.nationalbarcode.com/History- ... anners.htm
In some ways, it's odd that a Wrigley's product started this innovation because Wrigley's product line remained basically unchanged from much of the mid-20th century. (Another example of the Wrigley family's traditionalism is the fact that permanent lights were not installed at Wrigley Field in Chicago until the mid-1980s.)

The San Francisco Chronicle re-printed a column from 1968 in a recent edition (3/1/09) about what a nickel purchased in the late 1960s. At that time, just a candy bar and Wrigley's chewing gum were among the few items that could still be purchased for five cents. See: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 15539I.DTL
User avatar
tesg
Veteran
Posts: 179
Joined: 06 Nov 2005 17:07
Contact:

Re: Penny (1 cent) Gum Ball Machines

Post by tesg »

In my childhood (1970's) there was a great family-owned convenience store down the street from my house that had a HUGE row of penny and nickel candy. It was an outright scandal the day they had to raise the penny stuff to 2 cents and the nickel stuff to 7.

But the best part about it was that I was old enough to walk there by myself, and my brother wasn't. So I'd go down and buy a bunch of penny candy, then resell it to him at a markup of a penny or two.

This infuriated him, but there wasn't a thing he could do about it except complain to our mom, which he did...and she ACTUALLY BACKED ME UP ON IT! "Well, he does do the work of walking down and buying it, you know. Nobody's making you buy his candy."

So I had a pretty good perpetual candy fund going for awhile.
Post Reply