Lost and Found: The Power of a Rediscovered Artifact

How an old gum wrapper sent me on a nostalgic reverie. Plus a new Inconspicuous News Roundup!

This wrapper has had quite an unusual existence. (Photo by Paul)

In 1996 — that’s 30 years ago — my friends Eve and David were doing some renovations on their home in Portland, Oregon. At one point they pulled up a floorboard and saw an old Juicy Fruit gum wrapper that had somehow ended up there, probably after being discarded by a worker. It looked very much like the brand’s then-current wrapper design, except for the slogan printed beneath the Juicy Fruit logo: “The Gum With the Fascinating Artificial Flavor.”

They don’t write marketing pitches like that anymore! Eve and David knew this was precisely the type of thing I tend to be intrigued by, so they mailed the wrapper to me. I ended up writing about it in 1997, as part of a magazine article about products with unusual flavors, and then the following year I reprinted that article in issue No. 8 of my zine, Beer Frame: The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption.

A two-page spread from issue No. 8 of Beer Frame, published in March 1998, showing part of an article about unusual flavors. The Juicy Fruit wrapper at upper-left is the same one shown at the beginning of this Substack article. (Photo by Paul)

After I wrote about the wrapper, I put it in a drawer where I typically save little oddball treasures. And then … honestly, I’m not sure what happened after that. Although I don’t recall the exact timeline, I know at some point I realized that the Juicy Fruit wrapper had disappeared. Had I carelessly discarded it? Was it hidden away in a spot where I hadn’t thought to look for it? Did it somehow get separated from the rest of my possessions during a move? All I knew for sure was that I felt shitty about losing this special gift that two friends had sent to me.