Chewing gum has been around for a very long time, dating back almost 9,000 years ago! There is some evidence that North Europeans were chewing birch bark tar for enjoyment and possibly to relieve toothaches. The Ancient Mayan and Aztec chewed on chicle which comes from sapodilla trees while in North America Indians chewed on spruce tree resin which continued with European settlers.
In 1840 John Curtis developed the first commercial spruce tree gum and in the 1850's he made the first chewing gum factory. But, spruce tree gum did not do well because it didn't taste that good and would become brittle when chewing which lead to the switch to paraffin wax. Soon after that Thomas Addams got his hands on chicle which helped him form a chewing gum company around 1880 but in the mid 1900's all gum manufactures had switched to synthetic materials.
Competition soared in the gum industry and every gum manufacturer was trying to develop new gum or ways to sell their gum to beat out their competition. Frank Fleer who had been in the gum industry since around 1885 wanted his product to stand out so he worked long and hard on trying to make a product that could blow bubbles. In 1906 he developed a chewing gum called Blibber-Bubbler but it was too sticky to blow into bubbles. It wasn't until 1928 that a Fleer employee named Walter Diemer accidentally made the right concoction to create the perfect bubble with chewing gum! It was named Dubble-Bubble
Walter Diemer wanted to test his new recipe so he took some gum over to a local store and it sold out by the end of the first day! To help sell the new gum Diemer taught store salesmen how to blow the perfect bubble so they could show people coming in who were interested.
Today gum is sold in many different flavors and shapes but Bubble Gum is usually pink, just like it was when Diemer first invited Dubble-Bubble.
Source: http://www.history.com/news/hungry-history/chew-on-this-the-history-of-gum
-SugarPop's Candy & Soda
248 N. Main Street
Historic Downtown
Mooresville, NC
(704)799-0959
