It’s here, there and everywhere. It gets in your hair and is on your chair. Found mostly under cinema seats, it’s that naughty bit of sticky stuff that makes a wreath around your mouth the minute its goes “pfft”. You’ve got it right. It’s chewy, gooey, bubbly...bubble gum that came out of the super brain of Walter Diemer, an American accountant, who was born and raised in Philadelphia. And the gum has turned 90!
Diemer loved to tinker around with gum recipes. It was while trying out one that he accidentally stumbled upon a stellar combination. Not only did he hit a jackpot with it, but also created history. Diemer was working for Frank H Fleer Corporation, the firm struggling with gummy experiments, when luck struck in 1928. Ever since, the world has been split into two – of gum-lovers and gum-bashers. Chew it, stretch it or blow it. The bigger the bubble, the better.
Fleer had actually started work on the gum right from 1906, which the company’s owner Frank Fleer named “Blibber Blubber”. But it failed to find favour with folks as it was too sticky and broke easily. It was also quite like some of the stuff which was already in the market. The firm, despite its best efforts, failed to find the right thing that could be stretched out and would come easily off the mouth. That’s when Diemer popped up with the ultimate gum.
Diemer could get hold of only one colouring agent that was available in the firm – pink. This is precisely why a lot of gum is coloured pink to this day. Diemer’s gum was a hit and the company’s owner Fleer signalled him to go on. He called the new product “Double Bubble”. Diemer was just 24 years old then. However, the gum had to go through its paces before it was perfected and marketed in 1937 when it became a super hit.
In 1998, the Toronto-based Canadian company, Concord Confections Inc acquired the Double Bubble brand name for itself. Today, the gum is a global brand.
Double Bubble has five main ingredients that give it its distinctive flavour - gum base, sugar, corn syrup, softener and flavours.
If the gum is 90 years old, there’s its closest cousin the chewing gum who claims to be as old as the Old Stone Age. Brisford University researcher Elizabeth Upling says they could trace chewing gum in its crudest form to BC 700, where it was used as a pain killer.