A new-product intro, McSweeney’s style

McSweeney’s has a fun short story up that imagines the birth, short life and quick death of a fictional product called “It Better Be Gum.” “Courageous Blast: The Legacy of America’s Most Radical Gum,” by Jack Pendarvis, told from the point of view of various characters involved in the gum’s creation, follows the trajectory of a product that’s clearly just awful (“After you spit it out, there was still, like, this greasy feeling and this weird bitter taste.