Courtesy Topps, Inc.

Bazooka's new packaging ditches its former red, white and blue design and signature comics.

By Scott Stump, TODAY contributor

Bazooka Joe has told his last corny joke. 

In a bid to market its product to a new generation, Bazooka Candy Brands is getting rid of the Bazooka Joe comics on its gum wrappers and replacing them with brain teasers, activities, and codes that will unlock content on BazookaJoe.com, according to a report by The New York Times. The comics were known for their corny jokes and Bazooka Joe sidekicks like the turtleneck-clad Mort, but only 7 percent of children between six and 12 have heard of Bazooka Joe, according to E-Poll Market Research figures cited by the Times. 

Bazooka Joe comics have been included with the gum since 1953, but by January, the redesigned packaging and logo will begin appearing in retailers like Target, 7-Eleven and Kroeger that had previously not been carrying Bazooka gum. The old red, white and blue boxes and wrappers will be replaced by a graffiti look with louder colors created by Goodwin Design Group. The redesign is one component of Bazooka’s first marketing campaign in five years, which will also include television commercials and online advertising. 

“What we’re trying to do with the relaunch is to make the brand relevant again to today’s kids,” Anthony Trani, vice president of marketing at Bazooka Candy Brands, told the New York Times.

Bazooka gum has been around since 1947 but has seen its sales dip in recent years, including a projected 48 percent decline between 2007 and 2012. While many adults will remember buying the gum at penny candy stores by the individual piece, it will now be sold in packs of 10 pieces. Half the pieces will be a new blue raspberry flavor, and the other half will be the traditional Bazooka gum flavor. The pieces will also be bigger, going from 4.5 grams to 6 grams. (Dentyne Ice is 1.5 grams). 

“Instead of a cheesy joke, we wanted to have a fun, engaging activity for kids, but the purpose wasn’t to not include Bazooka Joe,’’ Trani said. “To me it is all about doing one thing really well, and that is refreshing the Bazooka brand.”

Ken Carbone, the founder of a Manhattan branding and design firm, told the New York Times that he believes the new design “feels right for today,’’ but thinks maybe Bazooka should not have entirely scrapped its old design. 

“I think this is a little bit of an overreach because they had some equity and authenticity” in the original packaging, Carbone said. 

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When shopping with -- and for -- your kids, find ways to let them make their own decisions about what to buy, and also teach them how to live with the consequences of those decisions.

No matter where you are, it seems like there is something for your child to want. At the mall, it’s a video game or 50-cent rides that last 45 seconds; at the zoo, an adorable stuffed animal; at the supermarket checkout, a pack of glitter pens; at the museum gift shop (which you have to walk through to exit the building), a cool puzzle.

If your child is constantly asking, “Can I have that?” and you’re not sure when to say yes and when to say no, we have a solution: letting kids make their own decisions and living with the consequences.

1. Provide for needs, but not wants
According to Ron Lieber, the New York Times “Your Money” columnist who is currently working on a book titled “The Opposite of Spoiled,” one approach, starting around kindergarten, is to buy your kids presents only at holidays and birthdays, and have children pay for everything else.

Learnvest.com: How many years apart should you space your kids?

“The family needs to have a very specific and ongoing conversation about the difference between needs and wants,” Lieber said, acknowledging that many things exist on a continuum. For example, many parents feel that books (within reason) are a need, not a want. Similarly, kids need a certain amount of clothing each season.

“Every family has to draw the line from when you cross over from 'want' to 'need.' These discussions become not just educational but wildly entertaining,” Lieber added.

2. Use allowance as a teaching tool
Once you establish this strategy as a framework, allowance can become your tool to empower kids to make their own decisions. How much to give will be based on your child’s age, your household’s financial situation and your family’s definition of needs and wants. 

Lieber and his wife give their 6-year-old $3 each week, $1 of which is designated for charity, $1 of which goes into a savings jar and can’t be spent right away, and the third dollar can then be spent any way the child chooses.

Now comes the tricky part: staying out of it if your child wants to use his or her money for something you think is frivolous. “It’s OK to ask in the moment, ‘Is this a purchase you really want to make?’ but you have to hold your tongue and let them accumulate small piles of junk if that is important to them,” said Lieber. “We are dealing with (younger kids) who don’t have that much impulse control.”

Learnvest.com: How I saved my family $600 a month on groceries

Kids won’t become fully formed financial beings within weeks or months, but by giving them the power to make their own decisions and experiment with that power, they will become more financially savvy. “There is nothing like real dollars in the real world to teach real lessons,” Lieber said.

3. Decide if you have a spender or a saver
Observe your child: Is she or he a natural saver who is great at self-regulating? If so, you’ll want to ask the kid questions about what she or he is saving for. This way you can be sure you’re comfortable with what the child wants to buy, and you can also use the conversation to teach simple research and math: Talk about how much the item costs and whether you might be able to find it cheaper someplace else. Then check in every so often to see whether they’ve re-evaluated, Lieber suggested. “One of the beauties of having them save and wait is that the intense desire for this or that almost always ebbs over time, only to be replaced by something new.”

If you have children who like to spend, adjust your response. You shouldn’t nag, but Lieber suggests going through their rooms and doing a cleanup together every six months or so. You can ask, “You spent $2 on this toy at the museum, and now we’re getting rid of it. Did you get your $2 out of it?”

Learnvest.com: Quiz: What career will your child have?

The beauty of this system is that it gives you an easy out during those toy-aisle meltdowns. If they’re begging for something they haven’t saved enough to buy, the answer is simply no. “If they’ve reached a goal, let them see it through and buy the object of their desire,” Lieber said. On the off chance you were going to get them the same thing for Hanukkah or Christmas, just get them something else instead.

If you have younger children who are too little to understand allowances or saving, at least refrain from buying anything simply because they’re whining and crying. Otherwise, you’ll teach them that acting badly gets them a reward. Instead, be comfortable saying no, and dealing with the occasional tears or tantrums.

4. Make a game of buying
If your family isn’t ready to out-and-out stop buying what your kids want, there are other ways to create more thoughtfulness around buying.

When Lieber’s daughter was young and they brought her to Disney World, her parents let her buy one item of her choosing. That turned the trip into “an exercise of weighing alternatives and budgets and delaying gratification, and not grabbing the first shiny object that was appealing.”

Learnvest.com: 6 ways to save on child care

Don’t forget your own behavior, because your kids are watching you closely. Every so often, it might not hurt for you to say something to your child, like, “I would love to have that dress in the window, but we are going to save that money because we’d like to go on vacation this summer.” The message will sink in eventually.

5. Neutralize peer pressure 
If your child is upset that another kid has something and he doesn’t, try to remind him of the things he gets to do that other kids can’t. For example, maybe he’s on the travel soccer team that goes on fun day trips; Mom or Dad works someplace cool and he gets to visit; your family is taking a special trip over the break; or a parent or grandparent has a special skill and built him something special to play with.

The goal here is to remind your child that everyone gets to be first at something.

This story originally appeared on LearnVest.

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A new survey of parents found that they -- cough! -- pardon, the Tooth Fairy leaves kids an average of $3 per tooth. That's, like, 30 pieces of hardened saltwater taffy!

The study (published in USA Today and conducted by Visa) also noted that some parents leave as much as $20 per tooth. (If your kids are USA Today readers, you might want to lock up your pliers.)

The borderline-extortion prices of molar loss surprised Kathie Lee, given the fact that times are tough financially, and that she only got a quarter.

"But that was in the 1880s," she added.

What about you? Does three bucks sound about right to you, or do you leave your little darlings a Benjamin per molar?

Julieanne is a TODAY.com contributor who accidentally swallowed most of her baby teeth during overenthusiastic gummy worm eating.

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BabyCenter

We know that kids days are expensive these days. Recent government figures show it costs an average $227,000 to raise a child from birth to age 17.

Now a new survey finds that the expense moms are most likely to be worried about is education.

About two-thirds of current or expecting moms surveyed by parenting website BabyCenter said they are concerned about paying for their kids’ school or college education. That was far more than the No. 2 concern, the cost of housing, which was cited by nearly half of those surveyed.

Other basic living expenses including the cost of child care, health care and food, also were listed by more than four in 10 moms in the survey of 1,300 BabyCenter users.

Parents also are worried about financing family fun: More than 4 in 10 moms said vacations were a big financial worry.

The survey, which was conducted in June, also found that about 4 in 10 moms waited to start or expand their families until they felt financially stable. That’s in keeping with other data showing that some parents have been delaying children because of the weak economy.

TODAY financial editor Jean Chatzky, also a BabyCenter.com contributor, discussed the findings on the show Tuesday.

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Expenditures on Children by Families, 2010

We know raising kids seems like a bigger stretch than in previous generations, and now here’s proof.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recently released 2010 report on the cost of raising a child includes a comparison with what it cost to raise a child in 1960, versus today.

The verdict: In 50 years, kids have gotten 22 percent more expensive to raise.

The USDA says the average cost of raising a child in 1960 was $25,229, or $185,856 in 2010 dollars.

Last year, the average cost of raising a child from birth to age 17 was $226,920.

The calculations are based on the U.S. average for raising a child in a middle-income, husband-and-wife family. The report cautions that the two estimates are not precisely comparable because of recent changes in the methodology for calculating child care costs, but adds that a general comparison is possible.

The estimates do not include college expenses.

The biggest culprits in the cost increase were health care costs, as well as child care and education expenses. Both categories increased in real terms and as a percentage of total child-rearing expenses.

The child care expenses have increased in part because more moms are now in the workforce.

The cost of food is still a major part of the cost of raising a child -- as any parent well knows -- but it has actually decreased in real terms since 1960. Clothing expenses also have decreased in real terms.

Are you curious how much your child -- or potential child -- could cost you? The new report also includes a handy customizable calendar that lets you estimate how much your child care expenses might be. The calculator factors in such things as geographic area, number of kids and household income.