Have you ever wondered why we’re so drawn to chewing gum? As kids, the appeal of blowing bubbles and the fact that we weren’t supposed to chew gum in school made bubble gum all the more irresistible. From ancient times to the brightly colored gum balls of childhood, the history of chewing gum is a fascinating story that spans the globe and transcends time.
Ancient Gum
People have been chewing tree sap for centuries. The Mayans, for example, chewed the resinous sap (a natural latex) from the sapodilla tree as early as the 2nd century. This tradition continued in Mexico, where workers who scaled the trees and cut the bark to release the sap—known as chicle—were called chicleros. This is a practice still followed today. Chiclets, the gum we know today, gets its name from this resin.
While American settlers learned about chewing tree sap from Native Americans, it wasn’t until after the Mexican-American War that chewing gum became the pop culture phenomenon we recognize today. In 1848, John B. Curtis began to produce the first commercial chewing gum, a delicious spruce-flavored variety.
The Gum Fad Picks Up Steam
The deposed Mexican president, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, brought the habit of chewing chicle to the U.S. while he was living in exile in Staten Island. It was there that he met Thomas Adams, who had been assigned to be Santa Anna’s secretary. Santa Anna believed that chicle could replace rubber, but when that didn’t pan out, Adams began experimenting with the sap.
Once Adams figured out how to heat, flavor, and shape the chicle into sticks, he started selling it, and it quickly became a success. One of Adams’s most popular gums in the 1870s was the beloved Black Jack, which many of us grew up with!
Wrigley’s (1891) and Chiclets (1900) weren’t far behind Black Jack, and soon, the nation was fully on board with chewing gum. The first bubble gum was going to be called Blibber-blubber, but it was far too sticky for customers. It wasn’t until 1928 that bubble gum, as we know it, was created and named Dubble Bubble.
In 1889, the chewing gum locket was invented—a device for saving chewed gum. It didn’t catch on until the 1910s, when it became a particular item for women who might need to quickly dispose of their gum, as it was considered unseemly for women to chew gum at the time.
Gum As We Know It Today
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