Chewing Gum As Viewed Through Glass

Although homo sapiens have been chewing a variety of substances for centuries,  it was an American, John B. Curtis, who first commercialized chewing gum in 1848.  He knew that American Indians chewed resin made from the sap of spruce trees and decided a market existed. As time went along other enterprising individuals enhanced the product by using other chewing substances and adding flavorings.  Today annual sales of worldwide are in excess of $26 billion annually.  Much of this growth can be laid to the imaginative, vigorous promotions by U.S. gum companies, including the use of glass advertising paperweights and change trays.

This post is devoted to a selection of these, beginning with a 1931 weight from the Beech-Nut Packing Co. of New York.  Best known for baby food, the company launched its line of chewing gum in 1910.  In May 1931, the famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart flew across America in an aircraft that had been specially made for her by the Beech-Nut folks to promote their chewing gum.  Called an “autogiro,” they featured it on a paperweight.   A forerunner of the helicopter, this was a relatively new aviation design that many at the time believed to be dangerous.  Earhart made the trip safely only to disappear over the Pacific six years later.

Teaberry Gum, celebrated on a weight, dates from about 1900 when it was patented by Charles Burke, an inventor from Pittsburgh who was experimenting with various flavors of chewing gum in his basement.  Commercialized by the D. L. Clark Co. of Pittsburgh the product managed a slow and steady sales record, peaking in the 1960s when Clark, hoping to create a dance craze called “The Teaberry Shuffle,” created commercials using the Mexican-themed music of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.  The dance failed to catch on and more recently manufacture of the gum went “south of the border.”

Few among us have never tasted Juicy Fruit, particularly popular with kids.  The average age of the typical Juicy Fruit consumer reputedly is under 20, with three to eleven year olds making up 60% of the business.  The Wrigley Company that issued the paperweight above, first marketed the gum in 1893.  Although the brand name is familiar to 99% of American polled, there is strong disagreement about what fruit serves as the model for Juicy Fruit flavor.  Some say a combination of banana and pineapple, others jackfruit, still others get a whiff of peach.  Wrigley won’t say.

Thomas Adams, an American scientist and inventor, is credited with substituting a natural gum called “chicle” for resin and founded a company that soon dominated the market with Black Jack, rolled out in 1884, and Chiclets, 1889. Prosperity allowed Adams to experiment with new flavors and substances, including pepsin, the chief digestive enzyme in the stomach.  By using pepsin (or claiming to) the gum could be marketed as a digestive aid. Since the enzyme apparently has little flavor, the company could add the taste of “tutti frutti” to the mix and issue a paperweight to celebrate it.

“I didn’t know that the Coca-Cola Company once upon a time issued a chewing gum?”   You didn’t because Coca-Cola didn’t.   This gum was produced by an entirely different outfit, The Coca-Cola Gum Company of Atlanta.  Although Coke’s people fiercely protected their trade name, by contract they allowed the gum to carry their trademark but insisted that the product include Coca-Cola as an ingredient.  A 1904 ad asserted that Coca-Cola Gum “contains the delightful tonic properties of Coca-Cola.”  The public, however, seemed averse to chewing — rather than drinking — their Coke.  Despite a dandy paperweight the gum company was in business only a short time.

Mo-Jo Gum may have been a latecomer to the chewing wars, made by The Chicle Products Company of Newark, New Jersey.  Its ads, circa 1915, were aimed squarely at denigrating the competition, suggesting that the others contained impurities.  “We have no monopoly, we simply will not make Dirty Chewing Gum.”  Take that Adam’s Black Jack!   Symbolizing its “purity” Mo-Jo was white but its labels, as shown on a weight, were highly colorful, likely to appeal to children.  Just how a tiger, squirrel and macaw sent a message of “pure, clean chewing gum” has gone unexplained.  Another Mo-Jo label featured an alligator and two egrets.

One of dozens of gum companies that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th Century America was the Chusit Gum Company that shows up in Cincinnati business directories around 1903.  It was a company headed by a well-known local businessman and investor named O. M. Bake, with an equally prestigious group of officers.   Their financial gamble, symbolized by the dice they included in their paperweight, may not have paid off because the company shortly disappeared from directories.  The name they chose for their gum, however, was clever, suggesting both “chews it” and “choose it.” 

As an afficianado of bubble gum myself, I am reminded that the product,  invented in 1928 by Walter Diemer for the Fleer Chewing Gum Company of Philadelphia, disappeared during World War II, as I was growing up, possibly because of a shortage of basic materials.   Fleers’ Double Bubble, the first commercially made bubble gum, made sales of $1.5 million the first year of its marketing even at one cent a pop.  To help sell the new gum, Diemer himself taught salespeople how to blow bubbles so that they in turn could teach potential customers.  In the post-war period, bubble gum returned and Double Bubble issued a number of paperweights, each with the same motif but various names attached of their dealers and representatives. 

Bazooka bubble gum, always my favorite, was first marketed in the U.S. shortly after WWII by the Tops Company of Brooklyn, New York.  As advertised on the weight shown here, the company included within its wrapper a color comic strip called “Bazooka Joe,” harking back to the war when “bazooka” was the name given to a man-portable recoilless anti-tank rocket launcher.  The offer of a “free gift” on the paperweight was a bit misleading.  For example, a telescope was offered “free” if someone sent in 200 Bazooka comics but just five and 40 cents also would suffice.

The ten paperweights shown here help to anchor in time chewing gum, a product developed more than a century and half ago as a result of American ingenuity and inventive spirit.  As a result, the jaws of  Americans, and indeed the world, ever since have been working up and down with regularity — “chewin,’ chawin’, chewing gum.”