As Singapore lifts its chewing gum ban, we discover the history of every street cleaner's nightmare
Simon Jeffery
Wednesday May 26, 2004
1. In a battle between money and street cleaning, money has again won out. Thanks to free trade - specifically the terms of a free trade agreement with the US - Singapore is stepping back from its world-famous chewing gum ban.
2. Such was the value the south-east Asian state put on its pavements and public transport (not for it the blob-splattered streets or sticky surfaces of much of the rest of the world) that it banned the import and sale of chewing gum in 1992.
3. But even under the new rules, Singapore still isn't the best place to go if you like a chew. Only 19 medicinal brands of gum will be allowed, such as those intended to wean users of nicotine addiction, and you will need a licence and identity card just to buy a pack. Anyone found dealing gum illegally will face up to two years in jail.
4. Chewing gum was not always so fiercely opposed. Though some of the stories of gum being used to patch up tanks and jeeps before important battles are perhaps a little overstated, it was the second world war - in particular the gum-chewing US GIs - that helped it spread across the globe like Coca-Cola.
5. Its origins can be traced to just under 100 years earlier, in 1848, when a man called John Curtis took inspiration from the spruce sap and beeswax gums enjoyed in the north-east of the US and sold his State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum, the world's first commercially-produced chewing gum. Soon afterwards, he added flavoured paraffin gums to his range.
6. The great leap ahead came about as a result of what must amount to one of the most far-reaching examples of Mexican-US collaboration. In the 1860s, Antonio Lopéz de Santa Anna, the Mexican general behind the massacre at the Alamo, and the man who connects Davy Crockett to Wrigley's Xtra, was in exile at the Staten Island home of inventor Thomas Adams. He persuaded him that he could make his fortune with chicle, a tropical root chewed in his homeland. The general believed could be turned into a rubber substitute, and that Adams was the man to do it.
7. Adams took the idea and ran with it. He made toys, masks, rain boots and bicycle tyres, but nothing worked. He was about to throw Santa Anna's chicle into the East River when, according to legend, he went to a chemist's shop and queued behind a young girl asking for a stick of paraffin gum. Adams remembered that Santa Anna chewed chicle, and put two and two together. He asked the chemist whether he would stock a new, better, kind of gum. He said he would. The rest is history.
8. The brand was called Adams New York No. 1, a pure chicle chew. Next came Adams' Black Jack, a liqourice-flavoured gum, and Adams' Pepsin Tutti-Frutti. In 1888, the Tutti-Frutti became the first chewing gum to be sold in a New York subway vending machine. Later landmarks included William Wrigley Jr and Henry Fleer's triumphant addition of mint extracts to a chicle gum, leading to the debut of the Doublemint brand in 1914.
9. Fleer also made the first bubble gum, the Blibber-Blubber, in 1906, but it was not until Walter Diemer, an employee of Fleer's firm, came up with the more successful Double Bubble in 1928 (adding latex) that the variant went on sale. It was cheap, cheerful, and people could afford it when times were tough. After his first wife died in 1990, Diemer rode a big tricycle around his Pennsylvania retirement village and gave bubble gum to children.
10. So, whatever Singapore says, chewing gum is not evil. It brought together enterprising Americans and Mexicans, helped defeat the Nazis, freshened innumerable mouths, and led generations of teenagers to drink and smoke, sure that the gum would mask every sin. But, as every street cleaner knows, it is a pain to get off pavements.
Simon Jeffery
Wednesday May 26, 2004
1. In a battle between money and street cleaning, money has again won out. Thanks to free trade - specifically the terms of a free trade agreement with the US - Singapore is stepping back from its world-famous chewing gum ban.
2. Such was the value the south-east Asian state put on its pavements and public transport (not for it the blob-splattered streets or sticky surfaces of much of the rest of the world) that it banned the import and sale of chewing gum in 1992.
3. But even under the new rules, Singapore still isn't the best place to go if you like a chew. Only 19 medicinal brands of gum will be allowed, such as those intended to wean users of nicotine addiction, and you will need a licence and identity card just to buy a pack. Anyone found dealing gum illegally will face up to two years in jail.
4. Chewing gum was not always so fiercely opposed. Though some of the stories of gum being used to patch up tanks and jeeps before important battles are perhaps a little overstated, it was the second world war - in particular the gum-chewing US GIs - that helped it spread across the globe like Coca-Cola.
5. Its origins can be traced to just under 100 years earlier, in 1848, when a man called John Curtis took inspiration from the spruce sap and beeswax gums enjoyed in the north-east of the US and sold his State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum, the world's first commercially-produced chewing gum. Soon afterwards, he added flavoured paraffin gums to his range.
6. The great leap ahead came about as a result of what must amount to one of the most far-reaching examples of Mexican-US collaboration. In the 1860s, Antonio Lopéz de Santa Anna, the Mexican general behind the massacre at the Alamo, and the man who connects Davy Crockett to Wrigley's Xtra, was in exile at the Staten Island home of inventor Thomas Adams. He persuaded him that he could make his fortune with chicle, a tropical root chewed in his homeland. The general believed could be turned into a rubber substitute, and that Adams was the man to do it.
7. Adams took the idea and ran with it. He made toys, masks, rain boots and bicycle tyres, but nothing worked. He was about to throw Santa Anna's chicle into the East River when, according to legend, he went to a chemist's shop and queued behind a young girl asking for a stick of paraffin gum. Adams remembered that Santa Anna chewed chicle, and put two and two together. He asked the chemist whether he would stock a new, better, kind of gum. He said he would. The rest is history.
8. The brand was called Adams New York No. 1, a pure chicle chew. Next came Adams' Black Jack, a liqourice-flavoured gum, and Adams' Pepsin Tutti-Frutti. In 1888, the Tutti-Frutti became the first chewing gum to be sold in a New York subway vending machine. Later landmarks included William Wrigley Jr and Henry Fleer's triumphant addition of mint extracts to a chicle gum, leading to the debut of the Doublemint brand in 1914.
9. Fleer also made the first bubble gum, the Blibber-Blubber, in 1906, but it was not until Walter Diemer, an employee of Fleer's firm, came up with the more successful Double Bubble in 1928 (adding latex) that the variant went on sale. It was cheap, cheerful, and people could afford it when times were tough. After his first wife died in 1990, Diemer rode a big tricycle around his Pennsylvania retirement village and gave bubble gum to children.
10. So, whatever Singapore says, chewing gum is not evil. It brought together enterprising Americans and Mexicans, helped defeat the Nazis, freshened innumerable mouths, and led generations of teenagers to drink and smoke, sure that the gum would mask every sin. But, as every street cleaner knows, it is a pain to get off pavements.
