chewing gum
A.Ferszt
own).
While I know that various cultures have chewed various resins throughout
the ages, how did the current product get started, and what made it so
popular in the US? For so much of the world chewing gum seems to equate
with Americans.
Thanks
AF
agplate
of New England (Vermont?) began chewing bits of pine tar. This practice
probably goes back to colonial times. I believe there is still a product
available in Vermont based on this evil tasting stuff.
What the rest of America would recognize as chewing gum was a vegetable
matter called "chickle" also derived from a tree resin. It was marketed in
the later half of the 19th century. The trademark "Chicklets" is derived
from the word chickle.
Bubble gum was first made around the turn of the century when it was
discovered that other tree resins (I think latex?) could be flavored and
sweetened, and when well chewed, blown into bubbles. The first bubble gum
was marketed by Fleer (still in business today with all those baseball
cards) and it carried the trademark "Blibba Blubber"
Sparky
Supermouse
I just happened to have 'Why did they Name it...?' by Hannah Campbell
out to look up an icecream question.
Here's what she says about chewing-gum, (in synopsis for copyright
reasons: the information given is from the book, the wording is my
own.):
General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was captured in the War of 1836 in
the Battle of Jacinto.
Having been captured and kept alive for political reasons, he entered
the US with a lump of chicle.
Chicle is the sap of a South American tree, the sapodilla, apparently
used by the Aztecs as a recreational chew.
Why he brought the chicle with him instead of, say, gold, jewels and
personal possessions is the subject of much dispute.
Santa Anna met Thomas Adams of Jersey City, an inventor. Adams took the
chicle and spent a while trying to find ways to use it as a rubber
substitute. He failed.
Meanwhile, the General left once more for his native Mexico, leaving
Adams to foot the bill for the warehouse storage of the chicle. This
ends his benevolent part in the great history of chicle-chewing.
Adams had found out that Santa Anna liked to take small pieces of chicle
and chew them. Adam's own son Horatio liked chewing chicle too.
While visiting a small drugstore, Adams saw the druggist sell a piece of
parrafin to a little girl for chewing. Adama talked to the druggists
about the relative merits of chewing parrafin or spruce and a few days
later the drugstore was selling little balls of chicle at a penny a
piece, quite successfully.
Adams rented a factory loft in Jersey City, bought more chicle ($55
worth) from Mexico and started marketing 'Adams' New York Gum - Snapping
and Stretching'.
Thomas Adams Jr took it for him as far west as Mississippi.
The establishment damned the gum as a vice, tobacco-chewers labelled it
'sissy', parents and schoolteachers tried to ban it and it sold very
well indeed, especially to children.
Rumours of its manufacture abounded, involving horses hooves, glue and
other things. Some genius managed to come up with the now-famous
assertion that if swallowed, it would result in death from 'stuck-
together insides'. Sales grew and grew.
Adams saw what he had done and he was pleased. He tried flavouring the
gum, first with sassafras, then with liquorice. The liquorice flavour
gum, 'Black Jack', is the oldest commercially available chewing gum.
In 1875, John Colgan of Louiseville also saw that gum was good and
marketed a balsam-flavoured variety called 'Toulo-flavored Gum'. This
prospered well.
Beeman's gum was first made around this time, marketed first with a pig
on the wrapper, then, after sound financial advice, with Beeman's
bearded face as the main logo.
In 1880, William J White revolutionised gum by the simple yet marvelous
discovery that chicle blended effortlessy and seamlessy with corn syrup.
Americans can guess what adding sweetener did for chicle's sales
potential.
Corn syrup blends effortlessly and seamlessly with just about any
flavour you want to put in it, making flavouring the gum a trivial
exercise.
William J White became a millionaire and dallianced with the famous (and
gum-chewing) beauty Anna Held. He showered her with pearls and with
peppermint-flavoured gum: Yucatan, named after the peninsula where grew
the bulk of the chicle used. Later on, he became congressman and
presented his gum to the King (Edward VII of England).
Thus collapsed Toulo-flavored Gum, unable to compete with the wonders of
peppermint.
World War II stopped the easy availability of chicle. It became an
emergency ration limited to the members of the armed forces. The
thousand-and-one uses the military had for it can be guessed at by
anyone who has ever watched McGyver. Uses included chewing to ease dry
throats, stress relief and emergency jeep repair.
The gum industry was therefore constrained to find a chicle-substitute
in a desperate bid to aid the war effort. Skilled chemists laboured
night and day for that essential military weapon: synthetic gum.
They discovered a substitute and the explosives suppliers Hercules
Powder Company became the main source of the polyvinyl acetate the US
army so desperately needed.
Thus ends the proud history of chicle use in the US: nearly all gum
chewed today will be polyvinyl acetate. No-one uses chicle any more,
really.
Oh, and it's perfectly harmless when swallowed.
Cordially,
--
Supermouse
The definitive Rodent.
Barry Shein
What about Bazooka bubble-gum? Is it still made? Does it still have
those little Bazooka Joe comics in it? Who wrote those comics and was
any medical help ever found for his sense of humor. They were always
something like joe gets a new hat, joe can't find his new hat, the cat
is wearing his new hat!, joe spasms in amazement/amusement,
ahahahahaha! Joe always wore a turtleneck pulled up over his mouth, no
idea why. Is it still a penny a piece?
Also, "Pepsin" chewing gum, to aid digestion! I seem to remember this
as late as my own childhood (say, late 1950's), tho I don't think
anyone put much truck in that claim by then. But that's "Pepsin", as
in the digestive enzyme which I assume it contained (I don't want to
think about where they got it from but I can guess), and of course
that other famous digestive aid "Pepsi-Cola".
Of course today we have nicotine chewing gum, and I remember Aspergum
(probably still available?) which was aspirin gum I guess for people
who couldn't or wouldn't swallow pills. What other drugs have been
administered via chewing gum?
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | b...@world.std.com | http://www.world.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
Jack Campin
Supermouse <Super...@warnco.com> writes:
[ interesting article about the history of chewing gum ]
> Thus ends the proud history of chicle use in the US: nearly all gum
> chewed today will be polyvinyl acetate. No-one uses chicle any more,
> really.
Do you know what they make sugarfree gum out of? It's clearly different
to the ordinary stuff: this is something most wearers of plastic dentures
find out the hard way. Took me hours of scrubbing with kitchen sink
cleaner to get sugarfree gum off my partial denture when I tried it.
Polyvinyl acetate is the main component of of PVA glue (US: Elmer's
Glue). That dissolves in water, if you soak it long enough. So why
doesn't synthetic gum dissolve in your mouth or on the street after
being rained on for a while?
--> email to "jc" at the site in the "From:" line: mail to "jack" bounces <--
Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/purrhome.html food intolerance data and recipes,
freeware logic fonts for the Macintosh, and Scots traditional music resources
A.Ferszt
Could you please post your history of chewing gum again...my server
either didn't receive it or deleted it. I haven't seen it yet!
Thanks
A.Ferszt
> chewed today will be polyvinyl acetate. No-one uses chicle any more,
> really.
>
> Cordially,
> --
> Supermouse
> The definitive Rodent.
Thank you...ignore my other message about re-posting. Apparently my
server decided to let me read all the articles after all!
It's interesting, but doesn't quite explain why gum is so much more
popular in the US than apparently anywhere else. Marketing?
Other cultures chew other things (betel for example), but that is a very
mild stimulant (I think), or coca for the same reason.Does chicle have
some 'drug' type effect, that people eventually forgot about when the
substitute came in? Why was it more popular than paraffin wax or any
other resin?
Barry Shein
>It's interesting, but doesn't quite explain why gum is so much more
>popular in the US than apparently anywhere else. Marketing?
I always heard it attributed to the fact that gum was given out freely
(perhaps packed into one of the rations packs?) during WWII, and the
soldiers brought the amusement back with them to their families etc.
Then again you hear that story about various things; coca-cola,
cigarettes, etc.
louise.s...@gmail.com
> I'm interested in the history of chewing gum (for arcane reasons of my
> own).
>
> While I know that various cultures have chewed various resins throughout
> the ages, how did the current product get started, and what made it so
> popular in the US? For so much of the world chewing gum seems to equate
> with Americans.
>
> AF
look at the podcast "American Innovations" for the whole story including General Santa Ana's part I n it..