Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/14/library-discovers-stash-of-bee.html
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Probably some kid
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Hamms had a catchy jingle, too. All the kids in the neighborhood could sing it, if not drink it.
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AMAZING!!! haven’t heard that jingle in YEEEEEAARRRSSS and it came back instantly. Also, wonder what books they were hidden behind, must not have been very popular ones.
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From what I can find online it looks like the gum dates to 1988 at the earliest, so “40 years” might be a stretch.
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I bet that Hamms still tastes as good as it ever did.
I have a vague memory of stashing things in the library but it was usually more selfish, like deliberately misfiling a book I needed that I couldn’t take out, hide some huge tome in the reference section with the atlases, put it back later when I finally finished what I was working on.
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Thanks! Will update.
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Wait, what happened to the slightly tattered December 1976 issue of Playboy?
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The quotes are a little misleading as to the dates.
The CNN article says that the cans are missing the GOVERNMENT WARNING
The facebook article CNN links to says that GOVERNMENT WARNING on beer was required in 1988.
The much clearer facebook picture shows a legible GOVERNMENT WARNING on the can of Hamms.
So we know that the beer likely wasn’t stashed BEFORE 1988.
Then the Timeframe of Godzilla Head gum is given as “late 80’s”, so this narrows the window to 1986 to 92 (plenty of wiggle room)
Other gum collector sites seem to indicate that Godzilla Head Gum existed in 1988.
So… it seems like 1988 -> 1990 would be a pretty reasonable window for when this was deposited.
Which still makes it a ~30 year old stash- but the significance of the dating clues seems to have gotten scrambled a bit in translation.
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Now that’s a party!
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This is starting to turn into an unexpectedly compelling episode of Antiques Roadshow.
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I just learned that I take my Hamm’s pretty seriously.
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“Hamm’s, the beer refreshing”… and I’m not even a beer drinker.
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I know I shouldn’t be shocked, but gum collecting is a thing and multiple websites are devoted to this?
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I can tell you that as library staff (I’ve worked in pretty much every job over the years), we take great pleasure in sabotaging attempts at hiding material. 
“Well, lookee here, what’s this I just found squirrelled away behind/on top of/underneath these books/shelves/furniture?”
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Heh. Yes, I worked in a library briefly once, and we had to do checks on the stacks during slow times, ostensibly to find misfiled books. I don’t think I ever tried hiding something under furniture, and when I did hide something it was just for a short period, a couple weeks while working on a paper. I realize this was selfish, but you know. . . teenagers.
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I’m a librarian and what we try to find is stashed books, usually law because everyone else aren’t such dicks.
My favourite finds were:
Several hundred pounds of cash money in old currency in a law report wed bought from a dead barrister ages before but never opened until we moved it. That was the library entertainment fund sorted for some time.
When I moved my office and found my bottom drawers contained several bottles of booze that I’d been given over the years, packet of fags from a party years ago, and condoms from the student induction packs. I mean it looked like I partied like Mad Men rather than the pretty much exact opposite which is what I am.
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What, no commentary on how unpopular those books must have been?
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As a lawyer, I endorse this message.
I don’t recall there being much book-hiding going on in when I was in school. But the law school had it’s own building with it’s own library. It was (shocking) probably the nicest and quietest library on campus, so it was a favourite place to study for students from all programs. There was a real elitist attitude towards the “snails” (students-not-actually-in-law-school) that irritated me then and still irritates me today. It’s kind of like listening to people who live in towns that rely on tourism complain about tourists.
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