Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
This bubble gum trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and starts with the 1928 accident that gave us pink Dubble Bubble and works back through 5,000-year-old birch-tar gum, Aztec chicle, the exiled Mexican general who handed it to Thomas Adams, and the soap salesman named Wrigley who built the biggest gum company on Earth. It covers the brands and their stories: Black Jack, Chiclets, Juicy Fruit, Doublemint's twins, Bazooka Joe, Bubble Yum's spider-egg rumour, Big League Chew's bullpen origins and Hubba Bubba. Then the odd corners: Singapore's ban, Rome's one-euro-per-wad clean-up, the record 23-inch bubble, Seattle's Gum Wall, Chuck Yeager's lucky Beemans and what xylitol does to your teeth. Easy questions suit kids' parties and candy-themed quizzes; the harder dates and names will test snack historians. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Walter Diemer, who invented the first successful bubble gum in 1928, had what job at the Fleer company?
Accountant
He was tinkering with recipes as a hobby; Fleer's president named the result Dubble Bubble.
Q 02Why is bubble gum traditionally pink?
Red was the only dye Diemer had on hand
His recipe came out a dingy grey, so he diluted red dye to pink.
Q 03Frank Fleer's earlier 1906 attempt at bubble gum, shelved for being too sticky, was called what?
Blibber-Blubber
Diemer used its formula as his starting point two decades later.
Q 04Chewing gum made from birch bark tar, complete with tooth marks, found in Finland dates back roughly how far?
5,000 years
Birch tar and mastic both have antiseptic properties and were probably chewed for oral health.
Q 05Which peoples were the first to exploit chicle, a natural tree gum, as a chewing gum base?
The Maya and Aztecs
The word Chiclets comes from the Nahuatl tzictli, meaning 'sticky stuff'.
Q 06Which exiled Mexican leader brought chicle to New York in the 1860s and gave it to Thomas Adams?
Antonio López de Santa Anna
Adams first tried to turn it into rubber for tyres before settling on chewing gum.
Q 07What was Thomas Adams originally trying to make from chicle before he turned it into gum?
Rubber for tyres
He patented the first gum-making machine in 1871 and created liquorice-flavoured Black Jack.
Q 08John B. Curtis's 1848 State of Maine gum, the first commercial chewing gum, was made from which tree's resin?
Spruce
Native Americans had chewed spruce sap for generations; paraffin gum overtook it around 1850.
Q 09Black Jack chewing gum, launched in 1884, is flavoured with what?
Liquorice
Chiclets followed in 1899, and Wrigley's Spearmint soon after.
Q 10William Wrigley Jr. arrived in Chicago in 1891 with $32 to sell what?
Scouring soap
He gave away baking powder as a premium with the soap, then gum with the baking powder, and the gum won.
Q 11Which company bought Wrigley for about $23 billion in 2008?
Mars
Wrigley is still the world's largest gum maker; it had bought Life Savers and Altoids in 2005.
Q 12Introduced in 1893, which is the oldest Wrigley gum flavour still in production?
Juicy Fruit
Its post-war yellow pack has chevrons echoing the 'Wrigley arrow' on Spearmint.
Q 13Doublemint gum, launched in 1914, is famous for advertising featuring what?
Identical twins
Illustrated twins appeared from 1939; the first real pair were sisters Marie and Mildred Maier of Alabama.
Q 21Seattle's famous Gum Wall is found beneath which landmark?
Pike Place Market
It began by accident outside the Market Theater in the 1990s and has been cleaned regularly since 2015 to protect the bricks.
Q 22Which sweetener in sugar-free gum has been shown to reduce cavities by inhibiting Streptococcus mutans?
Xylitol
Sorbitol has the same effect but is only about a third as effective; xylitol is also called birch sugar.
Q 23Chiclets, introduced in 1900, were an innovation because of what?
A hard candy coating
They were made by the American Chicle Company founded by Thomas Adams; the brand is now owned by Perfetti Van Melle.
Q 14Which company launched Bazooka bubble gum in Brooklyn in 1947?
Topps
The Bazooka Joe comic strips arrived in 1953; more than 1,535 different wrappers exist.
Q 15In 1977, rumours claimed Bubble Yum was soft because it contained what?
Spider eggs
Life Savers took out full-page newspaper ads to deny it; the gum outsold Life Savers candy.
Q 16A pitcher and a bat boy from which minor-league team dreamed up Big League Chew?
Portland Mavericks
Rob Nelson and future filmmaker Todd Field; ex-Yankee Jim Bouton pitched it to Wrigley as a healthy alternative to chewing tobacco.
Q 17Hubba Bubba, launched in 1979, takes its name from a phrase used by whom to express approval?
WWII military personnel
During development at Wrigley's Santa Cruz plant it was code-named 'Stagecoach'.
Q 18Which country has banned the sale of chewing gum since 1992?
Singapore
Vandals had been jamming the door sensors of the new MRT trains; since 2004 pharmacists may sell therapeutic gum.
Q 19Which city has to remove around 15,000 wads of gum a day from its streets at about one euro apiece?
Rome
Singapore's pavements, thanks to its ban, are almost uniquely gum-free.
Q 20How big was the largest bubble-gum bubble ever blown, by Susan Montgomery Williams in 1994?
23 inches
She used her hands to shape it; Chad Fell's hands-free record from 2004 stands at 20 inches.
Q 24Which gum, an aviators' good-luck charm, did Chuck Yeager reportedly chew before every flight?
Beemans
Ohio physician Edward Beeman formulated it in 1890 with pepsin, since removed.
Q 25The 'bubblegum pop' era of catchy, disposable hits such as Sugar, Sugar is usually dated to which years?
1967 to 1972
Producer Jeffry Katz claimed he coined the term after deciding the target audience was 'teenagers, the young kids'.
Q 26By the 1960s, US gum makers had switched their gum base from chicle to what?
Butadiene synthetic rubber
It was cheaper; gum base is a mix of polymers, plasticisers and resins whose recipes are closely guarded.
Q 27The first flavoured chewing gum, made by John Colgan in the 1860s, used tolu, an extract of which tree?
Balsam
He called the sticks 'Taffy Tolu' and later pioneered chicle-based gum manufacturing.
Q 28A 2011 review found chewing gum improves which cognitive functions?
Working memory and perception speed
Episodic memory improved too, though gum also sheds microplastics into saliva.
Q 29An early US patent on chewing gum was filed in December 1869 by William Semple, who worked as what?
A dentist
His gum was no treat: ingredients included chalk and powdered liquorice root.
Q 30Which company bought Dubble Bubble's owner Concord Confections in 2003?
Tootsie Roll Industries
The comic strips and fortunes on the wrappers were dropped, but the mascot Pud stayed.