The Enduring Popularity of Bubble Gum

94 years old and still blowing strong

Woman chewing bubble gum. Jim McCluskey from Everett, Washington, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Chewing gum is anything but a recent invention; in fact, it has been around for thousands of years. Mayans popularized the idea of chewing gum when they chomped on chicle, a substance derived from the sopapilla tree.

Chicle made its way to North America via Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican general and president who lost the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto which led to Texas Independence. Exiled after losing the Mexican-American War and much of Mexico’s territory in the 1850s , Santa Anna eventually wound up in New York City. Santa Anna brought chicle to the United States in a get-rich-quick scheme to create a product like rubber but it failed.

Instead, his cohort American inventor Thomas Adams used the chicle to make chewing gum. By 1899, Adams helped found the American Chicle Company. Additional manufacturers, including William Wrigley Jr., turned chewing gum into a thriving business in the United States.

Stuck on bubble gum

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, confectioner Frank Fleer was also in the chewing gum business, but he came up with a novel idea to differentiate his product.

In 1906, Fleer first created a gum that could be both chewed and blown into bubbles. The concoction…