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The First Pop and Blam of Bubblegum!

When you think of bubblegum, I’ll bet 10,000 gum balls the Fleer brothers don’t enter your mind. But the Fleer brothers started it all. The story begins when Philadelphia native Frank Fleer, born in 1860, joined and later took over his father-in-law’s flavor extracts company. Fleer was in good company: his father-in-law was a Quaker, one of the oldest, most influential, and ethical players in candy history. Within five years Fleer began making chewing gum, some of which he sold in vending machines in the lobby of buildings.

One of the Fleer company’s most impressive accomplishments was created by Frank’s brother, Henry. He added a candy coating to pieces of chicle – a process known as “panning” that dates

Look Who Made this Classic!

back to the 16th century “sugar plums” and is responsible for such treats as the jelly bean, Jaw Breaker, and Fireball. He called the pieces “chiclets” and the Chiclet we all know was born. Surprised? Most people think the Chiclet was an Adams gum from the get-go (think: “Adams” on the Chiclet boxes). Actually, the Fleers sold the Chiclet to Sen-Sen and, ultimately, to the American Chicle Company, of which Thomas Adams was a part.

Blibber Blubber: The Ill-fated First

As part of the deal, the Fleer gum company could continue making chewing gum, only the gum couldn’t contain the critical component, chicle. Three years before, Frank had experimented with doing something the big three of the early gum universe – Wrigley, The American Chicle Company, and Beech-Nut – had not attempted: make a gum that could blow bubbles. He succeeded, using natural rubber latex, and launched the first bubble gum ever, called Blibber-Blubber. Shortly after, the Blibber-Blubber bubble popped. The texture was grainy and broke apart and the bubbles were hard to make. Worse, the gum adhered to skin with the ferocity of superglue. By the time Fleer sold his business to American Chicle in 1909, he didn’t have much to do.

But in 1913, Frank Fleer rose again, this time with the Frank H. Fleer Corporation in Philadelphia. The company made candy and trading cards featuring such celebrities as Babe Ruth, Gloria Swanson, and Mary Pickford. All the while, the pursuit of bubble gum continued, even after Fleer retired and his son-in-law Gilbert Mustin took over the business.

During the late 1920s, the company’s cost accountant, 23 year-old William Diemer would sneak into the lab after hours and play around with the bubblegum recipe. He wasn’t a cook, chemist or scientist and didn’t aspire to any of these things. What drove him was probably curiosity mixed with a sense of adventure. Numerous batches failed until finally, he got it right. Well, almost right. The gum didn’t stick and he could blow bubbles, but not if he let the gum sit overnight. In 1928, after more fiddling, Diemer figured it out, and added pink dye, the only coloring he could find in the lab. That’s why bubblegum is pink to this day.

He presented his creation to the company and Mustin dubbed it the misspelled Dubble Bubble. When they were ready to market the gum, Diemer himself went into shops to teach shopkeepers how to blow bubbles, so they could teach their customers to blow bubbles, who would teach their kids to blow bubbles, and their kids, their kids … and an American tradition began!

The Dubble Bubble has lived a long and fruitful life ever since, even appearing in the rations of GIs during World War II. It rose above competition from Topps, who made Bazooka just before the War and took off in the ‘50s, and Baloney made by the Bowman Company of Brooklyn New York, an early maker of trading cards. Today, Marvel Entertainment Group produces 15 million pieces a day. As for Frank Fleer – he died in 1921 and never lived to see his bubble gum succeed. William Diemer never trademarked his invention, never invented new confections, and never left the company. Instead, he became a senior executive and had a career which his wife said, after his death in 1998, was happy.

How the Chewing Gum Saved Baby Food and Possibly Ham

Bartlett Arkell was born into a prominent family in 1862. His father was a publisher and state senator, and Arkell carried on the tradition as an editor for 11 years. He left to co-found The Imperial Packing Co, which produced packaging for hams, bacon and lard. No doubt he had help from his friend and mentor, bacon baron Arthur Armour.

Soon Arkell became company president, and under his direction the company excelled. After a friend said the name “Imperial” was ill-suited for an American ham, he changed it to Beech-Nut conjuring images of the American tree and the smoky flavor of his hams. He pioneered the use of glass and vacuum-packed containers and branched the company into everything from peanut butter to soup. Around 1910, Arkell’s brother-in-law, whose own brother helped start the American Chicle Company, suggested that Beech-Nut enter the chewing gum arena. So, they did.

As a person, Arkell was a devote patron of the arts, active supporter of the Canajoharie, New York community where he lived, and a great employer, giving his turn-of-century employees health benefits, pensions, and bonuses. And, like all success in the chewing gum world, Arkell was also a stealth marketer. Among his stints, he hired a traveling circus to showcase his candy and gum and created the personas of the convincingly attractive “Beech-Nut Girls”.

Earhart on the Beech-Nut Plane

But the pièce de résistance was when he contracted Amelia Earhart to fly a plane brandishing the Beech-Nut name from New Jersey to Oakland and back. With funding made possible from the publicity from this flight, and additional support from Beech-Nut, Earhart was able to fly from New York to Europe in 1932 and Hawaii to California in 1935 and embark on the around-the-world flight in 1937 that was her end.

Eventually, Beech-Nut became one of the three biggest gum companies in the nation, along with the American Chicle Company and Wrigley’s Gum. During the Depression, when Beech-Nut’s food profits faltered, the chewing gum kept them alive, accounting for $11 of the $18 million in profits that year. In 1931 they introduced strained baby food which they are most known for today.

Bartlett Arkell
Photo: The Arkell Museum

The Quick Clean Story of Dentyne

This familiar gum was invented by pharmacist. Franklin V.Canning in New York in 1899. The name stood for “Dental Hygiene” and Canning was the first, since the Aztecs, anyway, to position gum as a breath freshener. Canning’s tagline was: “To prevent decay, To sweeten the breath, To keep teeth white.” “Taste the tingle” is new – demonstrates the transition of gum from something that is purposeful to something that creates an experience.

“Classic” Dentyne