It's surprising it didn't happen sooner, but it makes perfect sense that 25 All-Time Greatest Bubblegum Hits should appear right now. At a time when many fear that all music marketing is aimed at Generation Y-Not? and their prepubescent siblings, this collection of late-'60s, early-'70s kiddie-pop serves as a potent reminder that these things come and go. But in a more positive formulation, it also demonstrates a wider spectrum of moods and sounds than the music's monochromatic pigeonhole suggests.

One thing that strikes you after chewing all 25 pieces here is the agitated, even dark strain running through many of them. How else could a vivid prison-escape song such as the Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus' "Quick Joey Small" reach #25 on the backs of the kid market? Or what about the Street People's poor "Jennifer Tompkins" (RealAudio excerpt), a girl whose problems begin with a drunk daddy, a dead mother and having to work at age 11? Even Tommy James and the Shondells' minor masterpiece, "I Think We're Alone Now" (RealAudio excerpt), spends most of its two minutes taking flight from puritanical parental units.

Bubblegum also showcased a beat more rocking than most would expect (or perhaps remember). "I Think We're Alone Now" is again instructive in this regard, where the heartbeats of burgeoning sexual discovery provide the rhythm. The 1910 Fruitgum Company's "Indian Giver" (RealAudio excerpt) and Crazy Elephant's "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin' " likewise built on this paradigm, with American Indian tom-toms crossing over an R&B chug until they merged into almost a Creedence-like buoyancy. Speed it up a tad and you're not far from the forcebeat of punk.

As far as this particular compilation goes, it instructively moves beyond bubblegum's "auteurs" — writer/producer/uberlords Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffrey Katz and subcontractors Artie Resnick and Joey Levine — and their stable of gooey acts (Ohio Express, 1910 Fruitgum Company) to include slices of supper-club silliness such as Tony Orlando and Dawn's "Knock Three Times," and even one shiny piece of British glitter called "Funny Funny," from the greatest group in the universe in the early '70s that wasn't called the New York Dolls — the Sweet. I'm also overjoyed the compilers included the self-referential "Bubble Gum Music" by the Rock & Roll Dubble Bubble Trading Card Co. of Philadelphia 19141 (yup, that's the full name), a song that categorically declares that the Grateful Dead suck as much as Herb Alpert and that bubblegum is better than R&B. How punk can you get?