Inventing Bubble Gum

Bubble gum is chewy. It’s pink. It’s fun! But did you know bubble gum was invented long after chewing gum?

People have loved to chew gum for 11,000 years. Prehistoric peoples in Europe made it from the bark of birch trees. The Indigenous peoples of North America made theirs from spruce tree sap. The ancient Maya and Aztecs added the sap of the sapodilla tree to their gum. In 1859, sapodilla sap also became the base of chewing gum made in the United States. By the late 1800s, the largest chewing gum factory in the world was in New York City.

In 1906, the Fleer Chewing Gum Company tried to make bubble gum. It was called Blibber Blubber. It was not very good. It was too sticky to blow a big bubble. When Walter Diemer went to work at Fleer in the 1920s, the company was still trying to make bubble gum. He was an accountant, the person who looked after the company’s money. Walter worked with numbers, not candy, but sometimes he was asked to watch batches of gum as they cooked. Soon Walter wanted to make gum himself.

Walter didn’t mean to invent bubble gum. He was experimenting with a gum base, the part that makes the gum chewy. Walter tried different ingredients and boiled mix after mix. One day he noticed one batch was surprisingly bubbly. Walter discovered he could blow bubbles with it. Walter had created bubble gum!

When Walter tried to make it again the next morning, it didn’t work. It took him four more months to create another bubbly batch. He asked the people in his company to test it. They loved blowing bubbles. Would everybody else? It was time to try it in the real world.

Walter made 300 pounds (136 kg) of his gum around Christmas in 1928. He almost forgot to add color to it. Walter grabbed the only food coloring he had. It happened to be bright pink.

The Fleer Chewing Gum Company named Walter’s gum Dubble Bubble. They sent five pounds of Dubble Bubble to a small candy store in Philadelphia. It cost one penny per piece. Dubble Bubble sold out right away.

Everyone wanted bubble gum. Dubble Bubble was a hit. Soon other companies made their own. Today you can find Dubble Bubble, Bazooka, Bubble Yum, and many more in stores. They’re all pink, just like Walter’s first bubble gum.

Walter worked for Fleer for the rest of his life, and he never told anybody but his company the secret to his bubble gum recipe. He also never made any money from his invention. He didn’t seem to mind. Creating something kids loved was more important to him. In 1998, his wife told The Capital Times newspaper that Walter often said, “I’ve done something with my life. I’ve made kids happy around the world.”