Gum Fighter takes on Alice Cooper (Bubble Gum Weekend)

Sorry to report the death at age 92 of Don Collier, Western actor who played the Gum Fighter in the Hubba Bubba bubble gum commercials of the 1970s and 1980s.

In a media interview, Collier said he really didn't like blowing bubbles with bubble gum. Yet bubble he did. Some of these Wild West-themed commercials had to be filmed in Australia so they could air in that country. Collier said in another interview that he had to travel to Australia twice to film the ads. But he liked Australia so much that he visited 6 more times. (That was before Australia became the military dictatorship it is today.) Some of the ads though were filmed in Arizona.

A Hubba Bubba commersh from 1981 showed the Gum Fighter getting into a bubble bustin' battle with an Alice Cooper look-alike...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cmEjR3d6KA

The Gum Fighter's adversary in that ad was played by the late Timothy Carey. A website once reported that Carey didn't know how to blow a bubble until he was hired to appear in the ad, and that his daughter had to show him how.

But the Gum Fighter won the showdown with Alice Cooper, and at the end of the ad, Collier's character declared, "Big bubbles, no troubles!" Then he laughed in a manner similar to Shadoe Stevens.

These commercials will live on as long as they dare!