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

Wrigleys Chewing Sweet Calendar, originally uploaded by spuzzlightyear1.

Teri Meier isn’t sure where her love of gum began, whether it was her first pack of Clove gum, or discovering a fruit basket filled with chewing gum disguised as blackberries, but she’s now the curator of a traveling exhibit called the Chewing Gum Chronicles Exhibit. She’s convinced her dad to build a jukebox for (you guessed it) bubblegum pop, and features gum memorabilia including classic gum advertising and Wrigley Field to gum art, including pennies that have been pressed into Seattle’s famous gum wall (which we’ve visited a few times here at AndrewsGumWorld) to information about Les Levine’s 18-carat gold chewing gum sculpture from the 1970s.

You can read more about the exhibit here, including these details on Teri’s life, and the question of why a gum exhibit, anyway?

Terri Meier, Curator of the Chewing Gum Chronicles Exhibit, has yet to answer that question. Maybe it’s her first pack of Clove gum or that miniature fruit basket filled with intricate individual blackberries disguised as gum. Meier recalls that collecting gum became an act of perservation rather than a desire to chew.

Meier graduated from Iowa State University and majored in Telecommunications. Little did she know that her background in public relations, advertising, and her enthusiasm for history would change the future of chewing gum. “I’m not quite sure when I decided to appoint myself as Curator and research, design, build, and finance the Chewing Gum Chronicles Exhibit. Some people like to golf, I found pleasure unwrapping the history of chewing gum.”

Meier admits it became an enterprise starting with her family. “Asking my father to travel 2,000 miles to build a bright pink bubble gum juke box was bordering on insanity.” Together, they built six other interactive displays. Her mom, sister, brother-in-law, and niece scour the Midwest in search of the perfect novelty gum for the exhibit. “It’s amazing how many people love gum. From authors and artists to Vegas casino owners, everyone had a story to tell.”

1975 Wrigley’s Doublemint Ad 1, originally uploaded by marcoa84.

An article earlier this week in The Daily Toreador, the student newspaper of Texas Tech University, starts up innocently enough an like any number of articles we’ve perused in these pages, especially those times we’ve roamed the United Kingdom exploring the blight of discarded gum. It’s no different in Texas: gum causes problems when it’s thrown away. Here’s how the article begins:

Chewing gum: Most folks probably don’t realize it, but there are strings attached to the stuff.

If anybody knows just how sticky the gum situation can be, it’s Charles Leatherwood.

Leatherwood, senior superintendent for the university’s grounds maintenance department, said the sidewalks around the Student Union Building are most littered with discarded gum.

“We go over there with pressure washers, razor blade scrapers and things like that,” he said. “It’s about $600 dollars worth of labor (each time grounds workers clean the areas around the SUB). You’ll see it all around campus, but it’s really bad around the SUB. I don’t understand that. We have lots of trash receptacles, cigarette urns - I mean there are plenty of places to put it other than on the ground.”

Fair enough, and we’ve advised elsewhere that gum belongs in one of two places: your mouth or the garage tin (can).But The Daily Toreador does not stop there. It invokes the Mayo Clinic, suggesting that you don’t have to spit out your gum, you can swallow it (with yucky, but predictable end results), it chats up an associate professor named Lee Cohen who talks about the history of gum research, especially as its related to reducing tension and helping people stop smoking and Matt McGowan, who wrote the article, also talks to a local dental hygienist in Lubbock, who reviews the dangers of chewing sugared gum, the possible benefits of chewing sugar free, and closes by noting that “You don’t have to chew gum. It’s not going to help you if you don’t. It’s not going to hurt you if you don’t.”

You’ll want to read the whole article yourself, trust us. You can find it here, complete with a sidebar from the National Association of Chewing Gum Manufacturers, including facts about the first patent on gum, William Wrigley, Jr.’s role in the history of gum (massive, as noted elsewhere in this blog, and not just because his company makes the Official Gum™ for Gum Guy), the emergence of bubble gum trading cards, why bubblegum itself is pink and tips on removing chewing gum from your hair.

Like we said, read it. It may be the only article about chewing gum that you’ll ever need.

Old Adams Gum Magazine Ad, originally
uploaded by slade1955.

(Found amidst the wonderful gum advertising archives at Wrigley Germany.)

Tonight, some friends asked me if I remembered the kind of chewing gum that came in a bandage tin and the “zebra” gum.

Here’s the bandage tin gum, and if you’ll check up above three or four posts or so, you’ll find a vintage commercial for Fruit Stripe gum.

Furthermore, if you do have a nostalgic hankering for gum that comes in the shape of something that’s used to help heal wounds, you can order your very own supply from Groovy Candies (which is where AndrewsGumWorld found the image above).

Remember, of course, that if you are actually injured, please do contact your physician.