49 Fun Facts About Bubble Gum

Which bubble gum did Fleer accountant Walter Diemer invent in 1928 while tinkering with recipes in his spare time?

Dubble Bubble. His test batch sold out at a Philadelphia shop in a single afternoon at a penny apiece, yet Diemer never received a royalty for inventing it.

Why is bubble gum traditionally pink?

Pink was the only dye on hand. Walter Diemer's first workable batch at the Fleer factory in 1928 came out a dingy grey, so he coloured it with what was there, and the shade became the standard.

What did Frank Fleer call the bubble gum he made in 1906, which proved too sticky to sell?

Blibber-Blubber. It was brittle as well as sticky, so it never reached the shops, and Fleer died in 1921 with the problem unsolved; his own company finally cracked it in 1928.

A lump of birch-tar chewing gum found in Finland, tooth marks intact, dates back roughly how far?

5,000 years. A British student dug it up at a Stone Age site in 2007; birch tar holds antiseptic compounds, so its Neolithic chewers may have been treating gum infections.

Which peoples chewed chicle, a natural tree gum, centuries before modern chewing gum existed?

The Maya and Aztecs. The Maya chewed it to stave off hunger and thirst; among the Aztecs, only children and unmarried women could chew it in public.

Which exiled Mexican leader, living in New York in the 1860s, supplied the chicle behind Thomas Adams's first chewing gum?

Antonio López de Santa Anna. The general who took the Alamo was living in exile on Staten Island, and hoped the sap from home would earn the fortune he needed to return to power.

Before selling chicle as chewing gum, Thomas Adams tried and failed to make it a cheap substitute for which material?

Rubber. The plan was tyres, but every experiment failed; left with his stockpile, Adams boiled it into plain gum balls, and the first batch sold out at a local drugstore.

John B. Curtis's 1848 State of Maine gum, the first commercial chewing gum, was made from which tree's resin?

Spruce. Settlers had learned to chew the resin from Native Americans; Curtis boiled it on a stove and cut it into sticks, and within a few years he had built the first gum factory.

Which flavouring goes into Black Jack, the chewing gum Thomas Adams launched in the 19th century?

Liquorice. Black Jack was dropped in the 1970s rush to sugarless gum, then revived in 1986 after a decade of letters from chewers asking for it back.

William Wrigley Jr. reached Chicago in 1891 selling which product, before his free gifts of baking powder, then gum, proved more popular?

Scouring soap. He had sold soap for his father since he was 13, and each time customers preferred the giveaway he switched to selling that instead, until gum was all he sold.

Which company bought Wrigley for about $23 billion in 2008?

Mars. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway helped finance the takeover; he said he had been running a 70-year taste test on both companies' sweets since he was about seven.

In 1974, which Wrigley gum became the first product ever sold by scanning a UPC barcode?

Juicy Fruit. The test shopper, the supermarket chain's own research chief, later said he picked the ten-pack on purpose, to honour Wrigley's work on getting barcodes onto its packs.

Wrigley's Doublemint gum is famous for decades of advertising featuring what?

Identical twins. The Doublemint Twins were a play on the 'double' in the name: they began as poster drawings in 1939, and real pairs took over once the ads moved to television.

Which company launched Bazooka bubble gum in Brooklyn in 1947?

Topps. All it wanted from the baseball cards it added to its packs in the early 1950s was a way to sell more gum, but the cards soon became the bigger business.

Which soft bubble gum was hit in 1977 by a playground rumour that it contained spider eggs?

Bubble Yum. Its maker, Life Savers, spent about $100,000 on full-page newspaper ads to deny the story, and sales recovered.

Big League Chew, the shredded gum sold in a pouch, was dreamed up in a bullpen to imitate what?

Chewing tobacco. A Portland Mavericks pitcher dreamed it up with the team's bat boy, Todd Field, who grew up to direct the film Tár; a former Yankee then sold the idea to Wrigley.

Hubba Bubba bubble gum takes its name from 'hubba hubba', a cry of approval popularised by whom?

WWII military personnel. The cry spread from the forces to become a teenage craze by 1946, and Wrigley borrowed it for its new bubble gum in 1979.

Which country banned the sale of chewing gum in 1992?

Singapore. Gum stuck on door sensors had been stalling its new metro trains; told the ban would stifle creativity, Lee Kuan Yew replied: 'If you can't think because you can't chew, try a banana.'

In Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which child chews Wonka's experimental gum and swells into a giant blueberry?

Violet Beauregarde. The compulsive gum-chewer tries Wonka's unfinished three-course-dinner gum: tomato soup, roast beef, then a blueberry pie course that turns her into the fruit.

Roughly how wide was the bubble-gum bubble that put Susan Montgomery Williams in Guinness World Records in 1994?

23 inches. She steadied it with her fingers; as of 2026 the record Guinness lists is a smaller, 20-inch bubble that Chad Fell blew in 2004 without using his hands.

Seattle's famous Gum Wall is found beneath which landmark?

Pike Place Market. People queuing for an improv comedy theatre began sticking gum to the alley wall in the 1990s; the market had it scraped clean more than once before giving in and calling it an attraction.

Which sweetener, common in sugar-free gum, is safe for people but can poison a dog?

Xylitol. In dogs, unlike people, it sets off a rush of insulin that can crash blood sugar within the hour, so vets warn owners to keep sugar-free gum well out of reach.

What set Chiclets apart when they went on sale in the early 1900s?

A hard candy coating. The little tablets caught on so widely that in Brazil and Portugal 'chiclete' became the everyday word for chewing gum of any make.

Which gum, an aviators' good-luck charm, did Chuck Yeager reportedly chew before every flight?

Beemans. It began as a way to sell pepsin, a stomach remedy taken from hogs, and flopped until the firm's bookkeeper talked Dr Beeman into taking the pig off the wrapper.

Which cartoon band topped the US charts in 1969 with 'Sugar, Sugar', the defining hit of bubblegum pop?

The Archies. No such band existed: session singer Ron Dante and friends recorded as the comic-book teenagers for a Saturday-morning cartoon, and still had Billboard's number one song of the year.

Lyndon Johnson's jibe that a rival 'can't walk and chew gum at the same time' was aimed at which future president?

Gerald Ford. That is the cleaned-up version: Johnson's own wording had Ford unable to break wind and chew gum at once, and reporters swapped in 'walk' to make it printable.

Which gum brand made 'four out of five dentists surveyed' a famous advertising line?

Trident. Read the whole line and the dentists never mention the brand: four out of five would recommend sugarless gum, of any make, to those of their patients who chew gum.

Which sandwich spread is the classic home remedy for getting chewing gum out of hair?

Peanut butter. Rub it into the wad and wait a few minutes: its oils loosen the gum's grip on the hair, so it can be combed out.

What did Thomas Adams install on New York's elevated-railway platforms in 1888 to sell his Tutti-Frutti gum?

Vending machines. The gum sold so well from the first that the machines are counted as the start of America's vending business.

Adams Clove gum became a favourite in American bars because drinkers said it could do what?

Mask boozy breath. The tart, spicy gum reached the shops in 1933, the year Prohibition was repealed, and was sold heavily across the bar.

In a 2005 trial, chewing sugar-free gum for half an hour after a meal reduced which digestive complaint?

Acid reflux (GERD). Chewing brings on saliva and extra swallowing, which wash acid back down the gullet; the dentists who ran the trial wanted to protect teeth from acid that reaches the mouth.

Why are air passengers often advised to chew gum during take-off and landing?

To ease pressure in the ears. Chewing makes you swallow, and each swallow opens the narrow tubes that let air in and out of the middle ear, so the pressure on both sides of the eardrum evens out.

In 1915 William Wrigley Jr. posted free sticks of gum to Americans whose names he found listed where?

Phone books. Every listed subscriber, about 1.5 million in all, was posted four free sticks; he had built the firm on free gifts and saw no reason to stop.

Chicago's Wrigley Field opened in 1914 under what name?

Weeghman Park. Lunch-counter owner Charles Weeghman built it for his Chicago Whales of the Federal League; when that league folded after two seasons he bought the Cubs and moved them in.

Which ingredient gives chewing gum its chew?

Gum base. It is the part that never dissolves, mostly synthetic polymers and waxes these days, and it is listed on the pack under those two words alone because makers keep the recipe secret.

Bazooka Joe, the comic-strip mascot of Bazooka bubble gum, is always drawn wearing what?

An eyepatch. There is nothing wrong with the eye: the gum's makers said Joe has perfect vision and wears the patch only to give him a distinctive look.

Baseball card packs lost their traditional stick of bubble gum in the early 1990s after collectors complained it did what?

Stained the cards. The marks cut a card's resale value, so the gum that the cards had been invented to help sell was dropped to protect them.

Lonnie Donegan's 1959 novelty hit asked whether your chewing gum loses its flavour where overnight?

On the bedpost. It was a remake of a 1924 American song that named Spearmint; with 'chewing gum' in the title instead, Donegan's version reached number three in Britain and later the US top five.

After his first good batch of bubble gum in 1928, why did Walter Diemer need four more months to make another?

He couldn't repeat it. The first batch had been a happy accident, as he admitted, and it took four months of trial and error before he had gum that blew bubbles again.

The Ancient Greeks chewed a gum made from the resin of which tree?

Mastic. Its Greek name is probably related to the verb for chewing, the root of 'masticate'; Pliny wrote about the habit, and the resin is still tapped and chewed today.

Playground myth says swallowed gum sits in your stomach for how long?

Seven years. Doctors who look inside people for a living say otherwise: swallowed gum does turn up now and then, one told Scientific American, but rarely a piece more than a week old.

Which gum brand signed the young LeBron James and gave him his own flavour, Lightning Lemonade?

Bubblicious. The 19-year-old rookie already chewed gum through his games and blew the odd bubble on court, so the 2004 deal was called a perfect fit.

In which animated series does Princess Bubblegum, a scientist made of gum, rule the Candy Kingdom?

Adventure Time. Princess Bubblegum is a working scientist as well as a ruler, and she builds some of her candy subjects in the lab, the sour Earl of Lemongrab among them.

Bubblegum Alley, a wall of chewed gum, is a tourist draw in which California city?

San Luis Obispo. One story has a high-school class starting it after World War II; shopkeepers had the walls scrubbed bare twice in the 1970s, and both times the gum came back.

Floyd D., the punk-style mascot of an American bubble gum, is what kind of animal?

Duck. Floyd D. Duck, a punk with a pierced bill, arrived in the late 1990s to tell teenagers to 'blow your own bubble', the brand's way of saying be yourself.

In 2012, Bazooka announced it would replace its famous wrapper comics with what?

Brain-teaser puzzles. Bubble gum sales were sliding and the makers wanted a fresher look, so after nearly 60 years of corny gags Bazooka Joe was cut back to an occasional cameo.

In 2009 TripAdvisor ranked Seattle's Gum Wall the world's second 'germiest' tourist attraction, behind which Irish landmark?

The Blarney Stone. Some 400,000 people a year were leaning back to kiss it; a microbiologist who visited told CNN he let his wife do the kissing, then wiped her lips.

Designer Anna Bullus turns chewed gum from her pink Gumdrop bins into what?

Shoe soles. Old gum is mostly a synthetic polymer, a close cousin of plastic, so once sorted and ground up it can be heated and moulded like one; the bubble-shaped bins are made of it too.

In ice hockey slang, a player who is 'spitting chiclets' has just lost what?

Some teeth. The small white gum tablets look enough like teeth for the joke to stick, and a leading hockey podcast took the phrase for its name.