50 Fun Facts About Bubble Gum

Walter Diemer, who invented the first successful bubble gum in 1928, had what job at the Fleer company?

He was tinkering with recipes as a hobby; Fleer's president named the result Dubble Bubble.

Why is bubble gum traditionally pink?

His recipe came out a dingy grey, so he diluted red dye to pink.

Frank Fleer's earlier 1906 attempt at bubble gum, shelved for being too sticky, was called what?

Diemer used its formula as his starting point two decades later.

Chewing gum made from birch bark tar, complete with tooth marks, found in Finland dates back roughly how far?

Birch tar and mastic both have antiseptic properties and were probably chewed for oral health.

Which peoples were the first to exploit chicle, a natural tree gum, as a chewing gum base?

The word Chiclets comes from the Nahuatl tzictli, meaning 'sticky stuff'.

Which exiled Mexican leader brought chicle to New York in the 1860s and gave it to Thomas Adams?

Adams first tried to turn it into rubber for tyres before settling on chewing gum.

What was Thomas Adams originally trying to make from chicle before he turned it into gum?

He patented the first gum-making machine in 1871 and created liquorice-flavoured Black Jack.

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

Native Americans had chewed spruce sap for generations; paraffin gum overtook it around 1850.

Black Jack chewing gum, launched in 1884, is flavoured with what?

Chiclets followed in 1899, and Wrigley's Spearmint soon after.

William Wrigley Jr. arrived in Chicago in 1891 with $32 to sell what?

He gave away baking powder as a premium with the soap, then gum with the baking powder, and the gum won.

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

Wrigley is still the world's largest gum maker; it had bought Life Savers and Altoids in 2005.

Introduced in 1893, which is the oldest Wrigley gum flavour still in production?

Its post-war yellow pack has chevrons echoing the 'Wrigley arrow' on Spearmint.

Doublemint gum, launched in 1914, is famous for advertising featuring what?

Illustrated twins appeared from 1939; the first real pair were sisters Marie and Mildred Maier of Alabama.

Which company launched Bazooka bubble gum in Brooklyn in 1947?

The Bazooka Joe comic strips arrived in 1953; more than 1,535 different wrappers exist.

In 1977, rumours claimed Bubble Yum was soft because it contained what?

Life Savers took out full-page newspaper ads to deny it; the gum outsold Life Savers candy.

A pitcher and a bat boy from which minor-league team dreamed up Big League Chew?

Rob Nelson and future filmmaker Todd Field; ex-Yankee Jim Bouton pitched it to Wrigley as a healthy alternative to chewing tobacco.

Hubba Bubba, launched in 1979, takes its name from a phrase used by whom to express approval?

During development at Wrigley's Santa Cruz plant it was code-named 'Stagecoach'.

Which country has banned the sale of chewing gum since 1992?

Vandals had been jamming the door sensors of the new MRT trains; since 2004 pharmacists may sell therapeutic gum.

Which city has to remove around 15,000 wads of gum a day from its streets at about one euro apiece?

Singapore's pavements, thanks to its ban, are almost uniquely gum-free.

How big was the largest bubble-gum bubble ever blown, by Susan Montgomery Williams in 1994?

She used her hands to shape it; Chad Fell's hands-free record from 2004 stands at 20 inches.

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

It began by accident outside the Market Theater in the 1990s and has been cleaned regularly since 2015 to protect the bricks.

Which sweetener in sugar-free gum has been shown to reduce cavities by inhibiting Streptococcus mutans?

Sorbitol has the same effect but is only about a third as effective; xylitol is also called birch sugar.

Chiclets, introduced in 1900, were an innovation because of what?

They were made by the American Chicle Company founded by Thomas Adams; the brand is now owned by Perfetti Van Melle.

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

Ohio physician Edward Beeman formulated it in 1890 with pepsin, since removed.

The 'bubblegum pop' era of catchy, disposable hits such as Sugar, Sugar is usually dated to which years?

Producer Jeffry Katz claimed he coined the term after deciding the target audience was 'teenagers, the young kids'.

By the 1960s, US gum makers had switched their gum base from chicle to what?

It was cheaper; gum base is a mix of polymers, plasticisers and resins whose recipes are closely guarded.

The first flavoured chewing gum, made by John Colgan in the 1860s, used tolu, an extract of which tree?

He called the sticks 'Taffy Tolu' and later pioneered chicle-based gum manufacturing.

A 2011 review found chewing gum improves which cognitive functions?

Episodic memory improved too, though gum also sheds microplastics into saliva.

An early US patent on chewing gum was filed in December 1869 by William Semple, who worked as what?

His gum was no treat: ingredients included chalk and powdered liquorice root.

Which company bought Dubble Bubble's owner Concord Confections in 2003?

The comic strips and fortunes on the wrappers were dropped, but the mascot Pud stayed.

In taste tests, which flavours do children tend to prefer in bubble gum?

They reject complex flavours because those make them want to swallow the gum.

Chewing gum is used as a novel treatment for which digestive condition?

It boosts bicarbonate-rich saliva and swallowing, which neutralises acid in the oesophagus.

Vandals sticking gum on the door sensors of which system, opened in 1987, helped prompt Singapore's 1992 gum ban?

Sellers can be fined up to S$2,000; the ban was proposed to Lee Kuan Yew as early as 1983.

Which landmark on Chicago's Magnificent Mile was the gum giant's global headquarters until 2011?

Groupon's co-founders were among the investors who bought it.

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

It housed the Chicago Whales of the short-lived Federal League and became Wrigley Field in 1927.

Which of these is NOT one of the standard components of modern chewing gum?

Flavours, colours and a hard or powdered polyol coating round out the recipe.

Roughly how many different Bazooka Joe comic-strip wrappers exist for collectors?

Each strip also carried a fortune and an offer for a premium.

Big League Chew was introduced in which year?

It came in the traditional pink of established bubble gum brands.

Which 2001 book by Kim Cooper and David Smay lists five different meanings of a sugary pop genre's name?

One definition is pop 'produced in an assembly-line process, driven by producers and using faceless singers'.

Which Wrigley plant, now closed, developed Hubba Bubba under the code name 'Stagecoach'?

The gum was marketed as being easy to peel off skin, unlike stickier rivals.

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

Like Neolithic birch-tar gum, the resin has antiseptic properties and was probably chewed to keep mouths healthy.

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

Doctors say there is little to it: in most cases gum passes through the system about as quickly as any other food.

Which brand was Hubba Bubba's main rival for most of the 1980s?

Hubba Bubba's pitch was that it peeled off your face more easily after a burst bubble than stickier rivals did.

US Hubba Bubba commercials are stop-motion animated by which Wallace and Gromit studio?

Canada gets different ads instead: 2D cartoons starring a purple Hubba and a pink Bubba.

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

The alley has survived two full cleanings in the 1970s, and a local pub owner reportedly pays for a monthly steam-clean.

Bubble Yum's punk-style mascot, Floyd D., is what kind of animal?

Bubble Yum was first sold by Life Savers in 1974 and is now owned by The Hershey Company.

In 2012, Bazooka replaced its famous wrapper comics with what?

The switch was meant to modernise the brand, which marked its 75th anniversary in 2022 with a short documentary.

Chad Fell's 2004 record for the largest hands-free bubble measured how wide?

The overall record is bigger, but that one was shaped with the help of the blower's hands.

A 2000 survey counted roughly how many gum blobs stuck to London's Oxford Street?

Gum litter is the second most common kind in Britain after cigarette ends, and one designer now recycles it into plastic.

Which character replaced Dub and Bub in Dubble Bubble's wrapper comics in 1950?

More than 1,002 numbered Fleer Funnies were printed before the strips were dropped after the brand changed hands.