Some very good points, Al. It seems to me that manufacturers have always sought to add some value to their base product by exploiting the popularity of some other cultural phenonmenon, especially if it was free or of little cost to them to do so. For most of the last century that phenomenon was professional sports, and it moved a lot of stuff, including tobacco, gum and candy. It's hard to think of anything more effective to induce an eight to twelve-year-old consumer to buy a product. So, in my view, it has to be the advent of televised sports - and its greater marketability - that marked the point at which the original base product, like gum, became secondary - or maybe even irrelevant.
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