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#The Food That Built America S07E03 #video #trending #viral #dailymotionlove
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00:01It's a multicolored treat you can play with, and it fuels a $20 billion a year global industry with nearly
00:10100,000 tons sold every year.
00:15The beauty of bubblegum, most kids are going to be able to save up enough money to go and buy
00:21a piece of bubblegum.
00:22It puts everyone on the same playing field.
00:24But before bubbles, gum was something else entirely.
00:29Advertisements said that gum could help with your digestion, calm your nerves.
00:34The colors were a little blander.
00:35It was white and beige. It was very utilitarian.
00:40Until a group of mavericks blow it up.
00:44Well, that's incredible. How do you do that?
00:47And unlikely innovators...
00:49I've been working on the bubblegum.
00:51It's so wild, right?
00:53The accountant found the magic ingredients.
00:56Create a modern-day gold rush.
00:59It's pink gold.
01:02I'm telling you.
01:03This is what we gotta be selling.
01:07They've pulled out all the stops with the packaging, with the marketing.
01:11Transforming crude experiments...
01:13What do you think?
01:14It looks great.
01:17Into household names...
01:19What did you say you call this?
01:21Bigly chewed.
01:23...and creating an entirely new consumer category.
01:27Bubblegum is the amusement park of food.
01:29They influenced how people perceived kids as a marketplace.
01:33This is where Gum became a candy.
01:36And now Confection in America will never be the same again.
02:04It's the early 1900s, and chewing gum use is on the rise in America.
02:09The chewing gum landscape at the time was just wildly dominated by Adam's gum and Wrigley's.
02:17These guys had the stores, they had the branding, they had the resources, the advertising.
02:22But the gum is very different from what we know today.
02:27The colors were a little blander.
02:29They had flavors we wouldn't necessarily think about in gum.
02:32Yes, there was mint, but there were also things like violet, licorice gum, flavors that we don't so much embrace
02:39these days.
02:40Gum was for adults. It was practical.
02:43You chew it for cleaner breath, or it's helped with digestion.
02:47You know, it wasn't for kids.
02:49You could look at gum as a parallel to like toothpaste today.
02:58But in Philadelphia, a regional gum manufacturer is looking to do the nearly impossible.
03:04Breakthrough in a market dominated by two industry titans.
03:09The Fleer Company was founded by Frank Fleer in 1885.
03:12And it was primarily a chewing gum company.
03:15Wrigley and Adams, they're going gangbusters.
03:18And Frank Fleer is looking to innovate.
03:21He's trying to figure out where's the white space, right?
03:24What's the territory that Wrigley and Adams don't have?
03:27It's hard to stand out in the chewing gum market at that time.
03:30It's hard to break through if you don't have something different.
03:35Fleer looks to another market that's recently taken off for inspiration.
03:40When candy came around after the Civil War and all of these fun candies, fizzy candies, hard candies, it was
03:48really important because they were made for an untapped universe of people who are working class kids.
03:56I mean, the beauty of penny candy, like cheap candy, it's something that most kids can enjoy.
04:02You know, you're not going to get price out of it.
04:04While kids are buying up candy, chewing gum at the time is not being made for them.
04:09So Frank Fleer decides he's going to create the first gum for kids.
04:17After months of tinkering, Fleer has a new product that he's finally ready to present to his distributors.
04:27I've got something to show you.
04:29At that time, Frank Fleer had young children.
04:32I'm sure he observed their behavior.
04:37May I present?
04:44Blibber Blubber.
04:48It's gum, but it's not like any other gum.
04:51It's designed for children to play with.
04:53It's hard to imagine now because we look at kids as such a viable consumer category.
05:01But back then, kids were really an afterthought.
05:04So for Frank Fleer to look at that category of consumer, that was a pretty innovative way of thinking.
05:10Let me show you.
05:13Let me show you.
05:19So in making this, Fleer has created the first gum that's meant to be played with and bubbles to be
05:27blown with and to be snapped.
05:28Like, he's invented bubble gum.
05:31Bubble gum comes into a world where blowing bubbles with gum doesn't exist.
05:37Fleer's invention births an entirely new food category, which will one day sell nearly $8 billion a year.
05:45And it's the beginning of an iconic brand that will churn out 1.5 billion pieces every day and become
05:55a staple of party gift bags and Halloween candy bowls.
05:59But first, you'll have to get it out into the world.
06:07Try it for yourself.
06:09It's really weird to have to articulate how to blow a bubble.
06:15Gently just blow air into it like you're blowing up a balloon.
06:22I feel like when you chew gum these days, it's just something that happens naturally.
06:25You just kind of do it.
06:27Like we're used to it.
06:31That's one small problem.
06:33Got to work out.
06:34It's a little sticky.
06:36A little bit of turpentine, it'll be fine.
06:39But the big fatal flaw is this.
06:41It basically adheres very strongly to whatever it sticks on.
06:47So strongly, in fact, it takes turpentine to remove it.
06:52Blibber blubber.
06:53Yeah, it's chewy.
06:55You know, you can blow a little bubbles with it.
06:57But boy, do not mess with it because it's going to mess you up.
07:03Ignoring the concerns of his distributors, Fleer releases blibber blubber in 1906.
07:10So blibber blubber comes out and then almost immediately is pulled back.
07:16Orders are cut.
07:17Nobody's interested in this sticky stuff.
07:22Over the next two decades, Fleer will give up on the idea of bubble gum, shelving blibber blubber and even
07:28gum itself.
07:31Focusing on candy.
07:35And in 1921, Frank Fleer passes away.
07:40The man who created bubble gum never lived to see it become the phenomenon that it is now.
07:46And upon his passing, he bequeaths the company to his son-in-law, Gilbert Mustin, in 1921.
08:01Five years after Fleer's death, business has slowed and Mustin is struggling to keep the company afloat.
08:10Desperate for a hit, Mustin revisits an idea from the company's past.
08:17Even though blibber blubber was a massive failure, it actually became part of the Fleer family lore and they just
08:24couldn't let that idea die.
08:27They knew that the concept of bubble gum for kids had legs.
08:32They just had to figure out how to make it work.
08:36But try as he might, Mustin really can't crack the formula.
08:42Enter Walter Diemer. He's the young accountant at Fleer.
08:46Sir, are you ready to look at the projections for next quarter?
08:51Not today, Walter.
08:52Now, he's privy to all of these attempts and experiments in trying to create bubble gum because his office is
09:00essentially in the same room where the food lab is.
09:04Still not having any luck.
09:06This whole thing is a failure.
09:16As the accountant, Diemer knows the financial struggles Fleer is facing.
09:21He's not a food scientist. He's not a chemist.
09:24But, you know, he sees what Mustin is doing. He sees the experimenting and he's intrigued, right?
09:42After hours, Diemer experiments with solutions for a new bubble gum recipe.
09:49Even if he volunteered, no one would take him seriously because what could an accountant possibly know about bubble gum?
09:56But he knows there's something there and he believes he has what it takes to crack the code.
10:02Diemer, he's just a guy who's tinkering, right? There's ingredients, there's things around.
10:07And so this is the effort of a hobbyist, right? A guy who is curious.
10:12He begins experimenting with a unique substance derived from the sap of a tree found in Southeast Asia.
10:20It isn't known for food, but for a type of rubber.
10:26He adds latex to the bubble gum base and suddenly you have something stretchy, something pliable and something that won't
10:34stick to you.
10:35So the accountant, right? It's so wild. He found the magic ingredients.
10:43After weeks of experimentation, Diemer is ready to present his new recipe to Mustin.
11:11Mustin had to see the opportunity that was now in front of him. This thing he wasn't able to solve.
11:19He said, oh, now we're on to something. Now we can start cooking.
11:28So Diemer and Mustin now have this prototype, you know, bubble gum, but it's still gray.
11:34It's like a lot of the chewing gums out there and they want to stand out, right? They want to
11:38stand apart.
11:39We need to have some colors.
11:43As humans, we eat with our eyes. When consumer products were typically given a color, it was a visual cue
11:54to let the consumer know what that product tasted like, right?
11:59So Mustin looks to see what color dyes they have in stock.
12:03All we have is pink.
12:11So what's great about this sort of accidental color choice for bubble gum is that really in the confectionary space,
12:19there wasn't necessarily a flavor associated with pink.
12:22You know, there weren't ham lozenges out there, right?
12:25Through to this day, if you think about bubble gum, you think about pink, but bubble gum wasn't pink because
12:31of some natural ingredient.
12:33It was just because that's the dye they had in the lab that day.
12:37While they've figured out the texture and color, there's still one major aspect they need to solve.
12:44Flavor.
12:45At this time, colors had very specific associations with flavor.
12:51So red was cherry, yellow was lemon, orange was orange, but pink didn't have any association.
12:59To create one, Mustin uses what they have on hand.
13:03It's a concoction. You have pineapple, banana, cloves, cinnamon, wintergreen, and some formulation that creates most of the bubble gum
13:13flavorings that we know.
13:14It's really funny when you think about it. Nature decided what purple tastes like, right? It's grape. Nature decided what
13:21orange tastes like. Tastes like oranges. Nature did not decide what pink flavor is, right? It was these guys at
13:27Fleer. And that's bubble gum, baby.
13:31In 1928, Fleer once again prepares to introduce the world to bubble gum.
13:40Because the bubbles it blows are twice the size of blibber blubber. They name this bubble gum, Double Bubble.
13:48With Double Bubble, Fleer gives America their first taste of bubble gum as we know it.
13:54But they won't be alone for long. A whole new wealth of rivals will soon look to put their own
14:01unique spins on chew creation.
14:09In December of 1928, Double Bubble hits the shelves of local Philadelphia candy stores, priced at just one cent a
14:19piece, and packaged unlike any other chewing gum.
14:23Wrigley's gum comes in sticks, so it's very flat. It's marketed to adults.
14:31Double Bubble is totally different than regular chewing gum in size, shape, texture, and color.
14:41So the shape of Double Bubble are these little cylindrical little chunks, and the reason why they do that is
14:48they've got a taffy machine, and that's where they feed the gum base through, and then they're able to chop
14:52it off in bite-sized sections.
14:56It's a large chew. It's a big chunk of gum. It's twist wrapped in a wrapper.
15:00All hard candies were twist wrapped at the time.
15:03They're really saying, you know what, this gum is for fun. This gum is for kids.
15:09While most chewing gum comes in packs, Double Bubble hits stores like Penny Candy, sold one piece at a time.
15:18When they are unleashed upon the market, they are a massive hit. Kids love it, and of course, they love
15:24the bubbles they get with Double Bubble.
15:27Word of mouth spreads fast, and within months, Double Bubble moves beyond Philadelphia to become a national hit.
15:35In their first year alone, I think their sales are 1.5 million. It's like 28 million in today's numbers.
15:41Double Bubble is so successful for FLIR, they actually discontinue their other product line.
15:46FLIR's breakthrough sparks a wave of imitators, transforming bubble gum into a burgeoning industry.
15:54But their greatest competition is yet to be born.
16:01It's 1938 in Brooklyn, New York.
16:05And brothers Joe and Phil Shoren have recently inherited their father's tobacco business.
16:11So, the American Leaf Tobacco Company. It's founded by Morris Shoren in 1890.
16:17And their business is to import tobacco into the United States.
16:21The business begins failing. Morris Shoren and his sons seek other opportunities in the business world.
16:28They reach out to a market research company and just ask them what business would they be able to put
16:34their talents towards.
16:35The market companies suggest chewing gum. They like this idea. Chewing gum, okay. So they give it a shot.
16:42And they realize the American Leaf Tobacco Company name is really not indicative of what they're in the business of
16:48anymore.
16:49What's wrong with Shoren Brothers? Or just Shoren's? Wrigley's made it work.
16:54Wrigley's is decades ahead of us. We need something that screams top of the line, right out of the gate.
17:02Why not just say that?
17:05Say what?
17:06Top of the line.
17:09It's a little old fashioned.
17:13What about...
17:15Just...
17:16Tops.
17:23Tops.
17:27Tops will one day be the biggest name in baseball cards, raking in over $500 million annually, sold in over
17:36100 countries, with an astonishing 70% share of the market.
17:41But before they get there, they'll put an indelible stamp on bubblegum, to the tune of a $700 million iconic
17:51brand.
17:53But in 1941, the US is drawn into a world war.
17:59Rationing hits, and sugar disappears, crippling the gum industry.
18:05So what happened was now, bubblegum production was severely limited.
18:11There was profound scarcity, and it created a proverbial pink market, where people were willing to pay exorbitant amounts of
18:19money just for pieces of bubblegum.
18:22Pieces that are selling for one penny are now fetching upwards of a dollar a piece. A dollar was a
18:28lot of money in 1945.
18:39I just spent five bucks on six pieces of gum.
18:43Was it made of gold?
18:47It's pink gold.
18:50I'm telling you, this is what we gotta be selling.
18:54We're already selling gum, and we're barely turning a profit.
18:57We sell chewing gum. Chewing gum is boring, Phil.
19:00We need to sell this.
19:03Bubblegum was this emerging market, a lot of excitement around it, and really the only big brand in it was
19:09Double Bubble.
19:10So they said, you know what, that's a territory we can probably compete in and maybe even grow in.
19:17There's only one problem.
19:18The two former tobacco company men don't know the first thing about marketing to kids.
19:29So, what does this stuff tell us kids love?
19:54They're looking around at these other categories the kids are obsessed with. You know, it's toys, it's slinkies, you know,
20:01it's wartime play, dressing up as soldiers, secret decoder rings, and they're into comic books.
20:10America?
20:11Exactly.
20:12It's after World War II, patriotism is at an all-time high.
20:16They know for the brand identity, we're gonna go red, white, and blue.
20:19Toy soldiers were very popular around this time, and they'd be shown holding what was always the newest, biggest, most
20:25powerful weapon.
20:27War heroes with big, powerful weapons.
20:34In World War II, that was the bazooka.
20:41Bazooka.
20:44In 1947, the Shorn brothers released their first bubblegum, bazooka, pouring every last cent into its launch.
20:53When it first came out, it came in a long tube. It sort of indicated sections so you could break
20:59off sections of it and chew what was probably about the size of a piece of double bubble.
21:04Tops only makes a slight adjustment to the double bubble flavor profile, using less wintergreen in their formula.
21:12The flavor of bazooka is unique. It's got its own notes. It's very distinctive.
21:16And there was something very unique inside the wrapper of a piece of bazooka. You've got your own comic book.
21:24You've got a comic book inside the gum.
21:28Within just a few months, bazooka expands their distribution nationally, only to find that initial sales are underwhelming.
21:37Maybe it was price, maybe it was size, but their first couple years were tough. They were not very successful
21:43with bazooka out of the gate.
21:45In an attempt to bolster sales, bazooka takes a page from Double Bubble's book and introduces one cent individually wrapped
21:54pieces.
21:55Additionally, they turn to a long-standing sales technique in the gum industry started by Wrigley in the 1890s.
22:04Wrigley, he started by offering premiums. So in the early days of peddling his gum, he would do things like
22:12offer, say, something like an umbrella.
22:14I mean, more expensive than the gum, just to get them to try the gum.
22:18In an effort to build customer loyalty, the Shorans come up with an incentive that they can add directly to
22:24the gum package itself.
22:26So with the original bazooka, you got this beautiful wrapper, you got a full-color comic, you also got a
22:32premium wrap inside that would advertise various prizes that kids could send wrappers away for.
22:37And these were actually quality prizes. You could get a bike, you could get a sled, you could get roller
22:43skates.
22:44So the prizes were of value and they were quality.
22:50I can't believe it. Another catcher's mitt. It's the third one today. You know, each of those is 1,700
22:57comics.
22:58Kids love baseball.
23:01The strong response to their collectibles gets the brothers thinking about other incentives to keep kids coming back.
23:09The initial idea was, how do we sell more gum? How do we get kids to be returning customers, right?
23:15How to make these things in a way that people would want to collect, right?
23:21Baseball cards.
23:25Topps isn't the first to include trading cards with their products.
23:29The practice started in the 1800s with a business the Shorans knew well, the tobacco industry.
23:36Trading cards go back to a cigarette entrepreneur who started slipping cardboard inserts into his cigarette packs just to make
23:43them firmer.
23:44And then eventually started putting different images and things.
23:46The trading cards used to be able to find in cigarette packs were really beautiful works of art.
23:52They would feature athletes, great leaders, plants, animals, medicines.
23:58In 1951, Topps enters the baseball card market, producing their first set, the Redbacks, a modest 52-card collection.
24:09When Topps got a hold of this idea, they really fully modified and fully modernized the idea of trading cards.
24:16When they came out with their first baseball card set, they standardized the sizes.
24:21They went out and got exclusives with baseball players.
24:24They put a lot of effort into the art.
24:25This is the blueprint for all future card manufacturers.
24:29You need good stats.
24:31You need bubble gum.
24:33And you need high-quality color photography.
24:38By adding single baseball cards to their gum packages, kids would keep coming back, striving for a full set.
24:46And so they had kids buying baseball cards and trading all year round.
24:49And then not only that, when you got all the players and you got the complete set, it's like you
24:53were happy.
24:54You suddenly have all the players, all the teams.
24:56And it's like, wait a second, it's a new year.
24:59Guess what?
25:00We got a brand new set for you.
25:02It was ingenious.
25:06Baseball cards started as just some giveaway to put into gum.
25:11Later on, that relationship switched and gum became something they just put into a pack of trading cards.
25:18And then later on, they got rid of the gum altogether, man.
25:21And it was just about the cards.
25:24Even as the baseball card industry explodes, Bazooka Bubblegum still lags behind Double Bubble.
25:30And Fleer now begins selling baseball cards as well.
25:34Baseball cards were continuously outpacing previous sales each year.
25:39But they were always experimenting.
25:40Topps was always trying new products.
25:42So Topps decides to try another marketing tactic to put their gum on top.
25:51So we got the new sketches for the mascot.
25:54So the pirate guy, Wesley Morse, this cartoonist, they recruit him in to help them reformulate their comics.
26:02Though comics aren't new for them, Joe Shoran hopes a new brand mascot will grab kids' attention.
26:09If you can give kids a good character to latch onto, a good mascot, ah, it's everything.
26:15Because mascot marketing becomes big in the 50s, right?
26:20Mascot marketing really starts to drive these categories of kid products.
26:24But the mascot the artist creates for Bazooka has a unique, unexplained feature.
26:31What's with the eye patch?
26:33Did the kid lose an eye?
26:36A kid with an eye patch?
26:38Why on earth would you make a kid with an eye patch?
26:49Why on earth would you make a kid with an eye patch?
26:52We did say to make them memorable.
26:56Well, because of a popular shirt ad at the time that featured a model with an eye patch.
27:02The man with the Hathaway shirt.
27:05It took Hathaway from a relatively small company into the stratosphere after those ads debuted.
27:12And Topps appropriates this idea.
27:15It's funny.
27:17I like it.
27:19What's his name?
27:20Bazooka Joe.
27:23Bazooka Joe is a kid that gets into trouble.
27:27I mean, he has very short little adventures.
27:30And Bazooka Joe becomes the sort of magical part of the Bazooka alchemy that really makes Bazooka soar as a
27:37brand.
27:37With the introduction of Bazooka Joe, sales soar, surpassing Double Bubbles and making them number one.
27:46For kids in the 50s, Bazooka was the ultimate value-added proposition.
27:51You got a piece of gum that you could blow bubbles with. Awesome.
27:55You could save up wrappers and redeem them for cool things. Awesome.
28:01You got a free comic strip with it. Starring a kid. Double awesome.
28:06By the late 1950s, kids purchased nearly half a billion pieces of Bazooka bubble gum each year.
28:14Bazooka bubble gum was sold as freedom and independence and rebellion.
28:20When it had previously just been like, you want a stick of gum? Want some Beeman's?
28:24You know, something your old man or your grandfather had in his pocket, man.
28:27And suddenly gum was marketed to us and it became the currency of childhood.
28:32Bazooka holds its lead as number one throughout the next decade, with Fleer's Double Bubble holding steady as number two.
28:44But in the early 70s, a new gap in the market emerges. And an unlikely player will try to fill
28:51it.
28:52America had long been in love with the Lifesaver. It was originally marketed in 1912 as a summer heat-resistant
28:59candy.
29:00And ultimately, it had gotten so popular, it was a billion-roll-a-year business.
29:05Lifesavers sends their researchers into candy stores across America to interview kids and find out what they liked and what
29:12they wanted.
29:12Lifesavers wants to get into the bubble gum game, and they call on their target audience for inspiration.
29:18So, first impressions? What do you think?
29:23Lifesavers, in their research, they went straight to the customer.
29:26They said, okay, what do you like about bubble gum, and what's missing?
29:31It hurts my jaw to chew.
29:33Your jaw would get sore from trying to break them down, and everyone's wondering, why can't you just make a
29:38softer bubble gum?
29:41So, Lifesavers has their market research, and they gave these food scientists an assignment.
29:47Come up with a bubble gum that isn't hard when you first chew it, right?
29:52That's going to be soft, that has a lot of intense flavor, and that can blow really big bubbles.
29:59Unlike the early days of Bazooka and Double Bubble, Lifesavers is an established corporation with all the resources to create
30:07what they're after.
30:08So, they have now an assignment. And, you know, the thing about Lifesavers at the time, they had a really
30:14good set of confectionary scientists.
30:17And they came up with a product which would change the entire bubble gum landscape.
30:24In 1974, Lifesavers launches the first soft chunk bubble gum, Bubble Yum.
30:33It was a huge, squarish chunk of gum, and you unwrapped it, and you popped it in your mouth, and
30:40it was immediately chewable.
30:41The flavor, called Soft and Juicy, is original bubble gum flavor, and it comes in a pack of five, with
30:49a suggested retail price of 15 cents.
30:52They've pulled out all the stops, with the packaging, with the marketing, they even have a slogan, the number yum
31:00taste in bubble gum.
31:03You knew, as soon as you saw those colors, as soon as you saw those logos, as soon as you
31:07saw those ads, you just knew, ah, this bubble gum is just fun.
31:13Within a year of launching, Bubble Yum surpasses Double Bubble, Bazooka, and even Lifesavers' own candy rolls, becoming America's most
31:22popular bubble gum.
31:24Sales in the bubble gum category skyrocketed, so suddenly people were buying more bubble gum than they ever had before,
31:30and that was all thanks to Bubble Yum.
31:34By 1977, Bubble Gum makes up one-third of all gum sales in the United States, and Bubble Yum commands
31:4327% of the nearly quarter-billion-dollar bubble gum market.
31:50Competitors soon take notice.
31:53So, three years after Bubble Yum triumphantly enters the bubble gum scene, Warner Lambert, makers of Dentine and Trident and
32:04Chicklets, decides they want to throw their hat into the bubble gum ring, and they create another iconic bubble gum
32:13brand, Bubblicious.
32:16Bubblicious tried to differentiate itself by coming up with more creative flavors.
32:21They were the first soft-chunk bubble gum to have a banana flavor.
32:24Later on, they would come up with chocolate mint flavor.
32:27They came up, I think, with the first cherry cola flavor.
32:31So, finally, the biggest name in chewing gum decides they are going to join the Bubble Gum Wars.
32:40Enter Wrigley with all of their gum-making expertise and all of their marketing dollars, and they create the Triumvirate,
32:49the final brand.
32:51And the great bubble gum brands of my personal youth.
32:54There's a brand-new bubble gum in town named Hubba Bubba.
32:58They got this guy who had done a lot of westerns to come in, and he was the gum fighter.
33:02They had a great campaign with it.
33:03Who was the biggest bubble in the West?
33:06The 1970s.
33:07Wow.
33:08This bubble gum game was on fire.
33:11And there was so much money being made by so many people.
33:14Despite all the competition, Bubble Yum manages to secure its spot as number one.
33:20But the king of gum isn't done yet.
33:24Wrigley's realize there's a whole market that they're missing out on.
33:28And something entirely new is about to come out of left field.
33:38In Portland, Oregon, a minor league baseball player is on the verge of greatness.
33:43But not on the field.
33:45Rob Nelson is a baseball pitcher.
33:48Never made it to the big leagues, but he was a pitcher out of Cornell.
33:51And he ended up landing with the Portland Mavericks.
33:59The bat boy on the team at the time is a kid by the name of Todd Field.
34:07Todd, what do you have there?
34:09So Rob Nelson sees Todd Field reach into a pouch and pull out these dark shreds
34:15and put it between his cheek and gum and starts chewing.
34:18He goes, I know your mom. I know your sister. You can't be chewing tobacco.
34:22A lot of players chew tobacco. And Rob was not a tobacco fan.
34:27And the bat boy is only 13 years old. So he asked him.
34:32And he's like, no, it's just licorice.
34:37Are you chewing candy to be like the players?
34:40Yes, sir.
34:43Nelson saw that there was potentially a really great product here.
34:48You're not in trouble.
34:50In fact, you just gave me an idea.
34:58Thank you for letting us use your kitchen, man.
35:02Rob Nelson is a left-handed pitcher.
35:05He's not a cook and doesn't understand how certain foods, let alone confections, are made.
35:10So Nelson, he goes out and he buys a make-your-own bubblegum kit.
35:16And he takes the bubblegum and he decides to make it look like chewing tobacco.
35:22But he's got nowhere to put it together. He doesn't have a kitchen.
35:26So he thinks about the kid that inspired all this.
35:28And he says, Todd, do you think your mom would let me come over and use her kitchen to make
35:35this gum?
35:35And he follows the instructions. He's got all the emollients to make chewing gum and he mixes it.
35:43Let me see what we can do about the color.
35:53Nelson's gum was brown for two reasons.
35:56One, it was root beer flavored.
35:58And two, he wanted it to look like the tobacco it was inspired by.
36:02What do you think?
36:03It looks great.
36:08And they slice it kind of wild like cranky into these strips.
36:13But it works. It works.
36:15And for all the kids that want to emulate their favorite major leaguers,
36:19this might be a novel entry into the bubblegum market.
36:24With his new tobacco-inspired bubblegum sample,
36:27Nelson now needs to see if he can find a partner to help him sell it.
36:36And he starts pitching it around to different gum manufacturers.
36:40And, you know, he gets his rejections.
36:42But then he lands with a gum manufacturer already intimately tied to baseball.
36:47The Wrigley family.
36:49Of course, Wrigley Field, the Chicago Cubs, and Wrigley Gum.
36:54What did you say you called this?
36:58Big League Chew.
37:03It's brown.
37:06Bubblegum is meant to be pink.
37:08Well, yeah.
37:10The idea is it's supposed to be like real chewing tobacco.
37:15They open this pouch and they see these tan, brown, irregularly shredded things.
37:20And he doesn't know how to preserve it.
37:22It's not really kept in a nice chewing gum way.
37:25And the brown color from root beer is a bit off-putting.
37:37With all due respect, it tastes pretty awful.
37:52It's 1979, and minor league baseball pitcher Rob Nelson is looking for a distributor for his new tobacco-inspired bubble
38:01gum, Big League Chew.
38:09Listen, we could sweeten the formula?
38:12I'm sorry, Mr. Nelson.
38:14But I'm afraid Wrigley's just can't sell this stuff.
38:18I appreciate your time, Mr. Rich.
38:19Hold on now.
38:20Where are you off to so fast?
38:22Please.
38:22Sit.
38:23Please.
38:25Just because your gum doesn't work the way it is, doesn't mean you didn't just bring us a great idea.
38:33Mr. Nelson, we are interested in buying your concept.
38:36The name, too.
38:38Wait, so you do want Big League Chew?
38:41If you'll leave the gum-making part to us.
38:49The product Nelson brought to them was not visually appealing.
38:52It didn't taste good, but they thought the concept was genius.
38:57Wrigley's licenses Big League Chew to a three-year deal.
39:01So using their already existing recipe for Hubba Bubba, soft chew bubble gum, they begin making these shreds and putting
39:09them in foil pouches, much like you would see the big leaguers carrying beech nut or any of the chewing
39:15tobacco that they loved.
39:17In May of 1980, Big League Chew is released.
39:21The original flavor, known as Out of Here Original, is standard bubble gum flavor.
39:26Ground ball grape, swinging sour apple, and wild pitch watermelon are introduced shortly thereafter.
39:34Retail prices range between 57 to 70 cents per pouch, with a portion advertised as the equivalent of 26 sticks
39:43of gum.
39:45The fun thing about Big League Chew when it launched is it had this foil pouch, which was like nothing
39:50we'd ever seen.
39:51We had this artwork on the front with this sausage nose ball player.
39:55This seemed like a forbidden product for kids to have.
40:00It's not surprising that if you market an adult product to children who want to be like their favorite baseball
40:09players, it's gonna latch on.
40:11In its first year, Big League Chew garnered 8% of the bubble gum market, 3% of total gum
40:19sales, and made 18 million in its first year.
40:22Big League Chew is so successful that it leads the charge for a growing sector of the bubble gum market,
40:30novelty gums.
40:32Suddenly there was toothpaste gum, Ghostbusters Slimer gum, weird toilet gum, gum that looked like rocks or little pebbles, strange
40:41stuff.
40:42Hell, there was Mr. T, gold chain gum.
40:47With the help of novelty gums, by 1993, Wrigley's secures its spot as the top gum manufacturer in the world,
40:56and the leader in bubble gum.
41:01Today, the total bubble gum market is valued at approximately $8 billion, and is projected to reach nearly $12 billion
41:10by 2032.
41:12Bubble gum is the amusement park of food.
41:14Chewing gum was utilitarian. Bubble gum was a choice, you know, and blowing bubbles, it had this extra action about
41:23it that was pure entertainment, right?
41:26The beauty of bubble gum, most kids are gonna be able to save up enough money to go and buy
41:32a piece of bubble gum, and they're gonna get to enjoy it and blow bubbles, and it puts everyone on
41:36the same playing field.
41:39The influence of bubble gum can't be questioned. They influenced how people marketed toward kids, how people perceived kids as
41:49a marketplace.
41:50And Fleer Double Bubble and Topps Bazooka were big parts of helping companies understand that.
41:59But the truth of the matter is, this was an inflection point in history and in confection history where gum
42:04wasn't about fresh breath, calming nerves, or calming digestion.
42:09This is where gum became a candy. Gum became a treat. It became fun, celebratory, brightly colored, something special for
42:18kids of all ages.
42:20Imagine, America never had bubble gum before, and now confection in America will never be the same again.
42:27.
42:28.
42:29.
42:30.
42:30.
42:30.
42:30.
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