People have been chewing on gum for a long time. Well, stuff that somewhat resembles gum as we know it today. The Ancient Greeks chewed on resin from the bark of the mastiche tree, the Native Americans used resin from spruce trees and got settlers into the habit as well. The settlers commercialized it and sold spruce resin lumps to others, spreading the idea.

In 1884, Thomas Adams developed Adam’s Black Jack, which was a licorice-flavored chicle gum, made with resin from a sapodilla tree. Shortly thereafter, William Wrigley began working on the mass production of gum, and after developing Wrigley’s spearmint and juicy fruit gums, began to market them all over the United States.

In the same era as Wrigley, brothers Frank and Henry Fleer began their own experimentations with gum. Henry’s project was creating candy-coated gum and his invention, Chiclets, is still widely popular today, as are gumballs, which are candy coated in the same design. Frank was seeking a more elastic type of gum and despite his first horribly sticky and messy attempts, eventually ended up with what we know as bubble gum today. Oddly enough, it was his accountant, Walter Diemer, who is credited with finding the right combination of ingredients to make the gum be stretchy enough to blow a bubble without requiring turpentine to remove it from the skin, as Fleer’s first prototypes did! Diemer also made history because pink was the only color left on the shelf when he was mixing up the concoction, and today bubble gum is traditionally pink. A result of the Fleers’ work, Dubble Bubble Gumballs, is still made and beloved today.

What started as resin from a tree has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry. There are hundreds of different flavors of gumballs, in all shapes and sizes. The gumball is still one of the most popular vending machine choices today and is a favorite of kids everywhere.