A n d r e w s G u m W o r l d

Chewing gum - thanks to General Antonio de Santa Anna!,
originally uploaded by twm1340.

 To read the words (and history) that goes with this image, click here.

1928 Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum Ad ~ Mother Goose Song
of Sixpence, originally uploaded by atticpaper.

Skybirds Chewing Gum Trading Cards - 1941,
originally uploaded by Thomas Duchnicki.

 
Lotte Green Gum Machine, originally uploaded by kshibano.

We can thank Greek engineer/mathematician Hero for creating the first vending machines in 215 BC (coins for holy water).

In 1888, the first US vending machines made their appearance on New York City subway platforms, thanks to a familiar force in the history of gum: Thomas Adams.

There’s a great site called gumballs.com which provides an overview of chewing gum itself and, as you might guess, the history of gumball/gum vending machines, including these insights:

Vending machines finally made their United States debut in 1888 when the Thomas Adams Gum Company installed machines on subway platforms in New York City that vended Tutti-Frutti gum. In 1897, the Pulver Manufacturing Company added animated figures to their vending machines, which provided added entertainment for the customer as the figures would move once coins were deposited into the machine.

Baby Ruth Gum, originally uploaded by Waffle Whiffer.

IMAGE: Wrigley.

Since we were last here, we’ve had a chance to review several cogent and worthy discourses (along with great diagrams) on how gum is produced, and we thought we’d slip in the links here (including two Flash videos, courtesy of Chewing Gum Associations — of International and Japan fame):

How gum is made, Wrigley

How gum is made, International Chewing Gum Association

How gum is made, Chewing Gum Association of Japan

IMAGE: madehow.com

We’ll confess that it’s been a while since AndrewsGumWorld has deconstructed gum as something other than a cultural force, a litter problem, and/or a creative inspiration for  commercials, photography, advertising and blissful bubbles.

So, we pause for a moment to  remind ourselves where gum comes from (chicle, originally, but not so much any more…unless you buy Glee Gum).

While the image above may not be the perfect recipe (exactly how much chicle do you harvest….how long do you dry it and how hot is the air….and where, exactly, do you get those big pots?), but madehow.com has a great article on how modern chewing gum is made, including this nearly exact accounting of the ingredients to your modern stick of gum:

Federal regulations allow a typical list of ingredients on a pack of chewing gum to read like this: gum base, sugar, corn syrup, natural and/or artificial flavor, softeners, and BHT (added to preserve freshness). This vagueness is mainly due to the chewing gum manufacturers’ insistence that all materials used are part of a trade secret formula.

There’s a lot more detail to be found in the article, including the height of chicle trees (32.79 yards tall) and the importance of centrifuges, greased wooden molds, the exact size of a stick of gum (1.3″ x .449″) and more.

Chew on this, as they say….