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who invented bubble gum

Walter Diemer, an accountant at the Fleer Chewing Gum Company in Philadelphia, is credited with inventing the first commercially successful bubble gum in 1928, sold as Dubble Bubble.

Quick Scoop: The Inventor

  • Name: Walter Diemer, a young accountant at Fleer in the 1920s.
  • Where: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the Fleer Chewing Gum Company.
  • When: 1928, the year his improved gum recipe became market-ready.
  • What he did: Experimented with gum recipes, found one that stretched well and was less sticky, and that formula became Dubble Bubble, the first truly successful bubble gum.

But Was He Really First?

There is a bit of nuance:

  • Frank H. Fleer, founder of Fleer, created an earlier bubble gum formula called “Blibber-Blubber” in 1906 that could blow bubbles but was too sticky and fragile to sell.
  • Because Blibber-Blubber never reached the market, historians usually say Fleer “invented an early bubble gum,” but Diemer invented the first bubble gum that actually worked well and was sold commercially.

Fun Details People Love

  • The first successful bubble gum was dyed pink simply because that was the only food coloring available in the factory that day; pink then became the standard bubble gum color.
  • The gum was named Dubble Bubble and sold for one cent per piece, selling out its first test batch of 100 pieces in a single day.
  • Dubble Bubble quickly became a huge seller, with early sales reaching over a million dollars as bubble gum turned into a cheap treat during the Great Depression.

Short Historical Timeline

  1. 1906 – Frank H. Fleer develops Blibber-Blubber, an experimental bubble gum that fails because it is too sticky and breaks easily.
  1. 1920s – Fleer continues to look for a workable bubble gum formula; Diemer, an in-house accountant who enjoys mixing gum recipes, keeps experimenting.
  1. 1928 – Diemer discovers a new, less-sticky, stretchy gum; Fleer names it Dubble Bubble and launches it commercially.

Today’s Take

Modern articles and histories still credit Walter Diemer as the inventor of bubble gum in the sense of creating the first commercially successful version, even though earlier attempts like Blibber-Blubber paved the way.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.