User:Jjwreden/sandbox

Intro
Bubble gum is a stretchier form of chewing gum that can be blown into bubbles. In 1928, Walter Diemer, an an employee of Fleer, accidentally developed the first successful and widely known bubblegum, Double Bubble.

History
In the early twentieth century, the first prototype of bubblegum was invented by Frank H. Fleer. Fleer was a candy manufacturer who took over his father-in-law’s candy production business and turned the factory into a chewing gum company that produced gum for the first time in 1885. When Fleer first started producing gum, he was well aware that the candy market was already crowded with rival gum manufacturers, so Fleer looked for a way to distinguish his gum from others. He found this way by creating a type of gum that could be blown into large bubbles. The gum that is used for the base in chewing gum is generally not suitable for producing bubbles; spruce gum is too tiring on the jaw and paraffin gum cannot be blown into bubbles. (What are spruce and paraffin???) Chicle (What is chicle???) is also an unsuitable base because it is too sticky. Fleer began experimenting with synthetic bases that would be suitable for creating bubbles and in 1906, he created “Blibber-Blubber”, the first commercial bubblegum. Blibber-Blubber was chewable, it tasted good, and it could produce bubbles; however, there was one side effect that kept Blibber-Blubber from being a successful and marketable bubblegum: it stuck to the face and could only be removed using turpentine. Blibber-Blubber never reached the stores. At this time, Walter Diemer was a young accountant employed by the Fleer Manufacturing Company. In 1928, Diemer experimented with chewing gum formulas and developed one that stretched more easily and was less sticky. Walter Diemer said that he did not know any chemistry, but instead used “trial and error” to create his secret recipe. He also discovered how to add pink food coloring to the gray bubble gum mixture which added to the marketing appeal of the product and allowed bubblegum to be one of the largest selling products of the inter-war years. Diemer successfully produced a pink bubblegum that could explode in the blower’s face without damaging the person who blew the bubble or anyone around as well. After finishing the development of his bubblegum, Diemer failed to get a patent for his invention and received no royalties. Instead, this updated bubblegum was marketed by Fleer as Double Bubble gum. The rights to the gum were bought by Marvel Entertainment Group, who began packaging the gum with trading cards (often baseball cards) until the late 1980s which boosted the sales of the gum. In 1988, the rights to Double Bubble gum were sold to Concord Confections, which manufactured bubblegum gumballs for the first time. In 1939, the Topps Gum company, which started in Brooklyn, began marketing Bazooka Bubble Gum after World War II. In 1953, Topps Gum Company also started putting baseball cards in each package of gum. Bazooka Bubble Gum quickly became the largest selling bubble gum. As of 2004, gum made up about 25 percent of the total candy sales in the United States. Sugarless gums started to be produced in the 1950s, but these were usually sweetened with cyclamates (what are cyclamates???), which was banned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1972. After this ban, aspartame became the main sweetener for sugar-free gums.

Records
Largest bubblegum bubble ever blown: Chad Fell blew a bubble with a diameter of 50.8 cm (20 in) without using his hands at the Double Springs High School in Winstron County, Alabama, USA on 24 April, 2004.9

Varieties Chemistry