Walter Diemer made my childhood more fun.
Business owners and baseball players alike smiled with profit and joy as they recognized his contribution to global consumer culture.
Diemer invented bubble gum in 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
It was an unexpected moment of inspiration for the high school graduate, a home chemist with a side job as an accountant for a gum company.
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Diemer combined creativity, curiosity, and instinct with a little luck and pink food coloring to change why humans chew.
This young man, who was only 23 years old at the time, had no scientific training. But he had a passion for the creative process and a willingness to fail.
In Palisades Park, New Jersey, in 1948, 10-year-old Peter Kadylewski was trying to stretch a king-sized piece of bubblegum into a larger one when he competed in the New York Boys Club’s bubblegum contest. That bubble exploded in my face. (Getty Images)
“He’s a perfect example of 100% American ingenuity,” Lee Wardlow, California-based author of “Bubble Mania: A Chewy History of Bubble Gum,” told Fox News Digital.
“Humans have been trying to make bubble gum for a long time, and Diemer did it in his own kitchen. He wasn’t even a chemist, just trial and error,” Wardlaw said.
“Thomas Edison knew 99 ways not to make light bulbs. Diemer knew 99 ways not to make bubble gum.”
One of the oldest candies in the world
Walter Edwin Diemer was born January 8, 1905 in Philadelphia to Edwin and Mary Elizabeth (Lord) Diemer.
Little is known about his childhood. However, he grew up in a time of rapid innovation in the American way of life.
1928 Original Double Bubble Gum Box. The first commercially available bubble gum, Double Bubble, was invented by Walter Diemer, 23, an accountant for the Fuller Company, a chewing gum company in Philadelphia. (Felix Chu/Alamy Stock Photo)
Automobiles and airplanes revolutionized travel and made nations smaller.
Home life has also become easier. Powering indoor plumbing may be taken for granted today, but it first emerged as part of a daily household chore in the United States during humanity’s long struggle for survival.
However, some aspects of human life have remained largely unchanged for thousands of years.
“He is a perfect example of 100% American ingenuity.”
The International Chewing Gum Association (ICGA) says, “While no one can be completely sure who was the first to chew gum, it is likely that civilizations around the world were chewing natural gum thousands of years ago. historians say.”
“Before the invention of light bulbs, telephones, and even ramune, people discovered the pleasures and benefits of chewing gum.”
ICGA also states that chewing gum is “one of the oldest candies in the world.”
During a 2019 Major League Baseball game against the Baltimore Orioles, Jake Rodgers of the Detroit Tigers watches from the dugout and blows a giant piece of bubble gum. (Mark Cunningham/MLB Photo via Getty Images)
It is also a habit unique to humans.
Rubber, resin, and latex plant secretions that humans chew for pleasure are widely found in nature. However, other animals did not develop this habit.
Simple pleasures captivate the human spirit and are deeply embedded in our DNA and dreams.
One of the most famous children in American literature was given the gift of a genie who could grant any wish in this world, and one boy asked for more gum than he could chew.
Introducing Tom Blankenship, the American “kind-hearted pagan youth” who became the model for Huck Finn.
The protagonist of Mark Twain’s 1884 novel Huckleberry Finn enthusiastically declares, “If he tells them to build a palace 40 miles long with diamonds and fill it with chewing gum, that’s what they have to do.” Told.
However, the 1920s was a time when pleasure was forbidden. Alcohol was prohibited by the Volstead Act of 1919.
Chewing gum and confectionery companies saw bubble gum as a way to satisfy the human desire to chew, and in the 1920s, a way to profit from Americans’ thirst for new taste pleasures.
Why is bubble gum pink?
All chewing gum is made with four basic ingredients. Fragrances such as spearmint. Sweeteners, natural or synthetic sugars. And coloring.
Bazooka Joe Bubblegum, with its famous cartoon wrapper, was used by Topps for decades to sell baseball trading cards. (Jay Paul/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Bubble gum is almost always pink in color.
Regardless of color, bubble gum requires a specific formula to be stretchy and strong enough to foam, but not too sticky, yet easy to chew.
“Build a palace 40 miles long with diamonds and fill it with chewing gum.” – Huckleberry Finn
The best chemists and food scientists have spent decades trying and erroring to find the perfect formula.
Frank Henry Fuller, the owner of the company that employed Diemer, also made some advances of his own. He introduced his Blibber-Blubber in his 1906.
The Bubblegum Wannabe was just as bad as its name.
In 1935, a man examines a spoon of jelly in the research department of a gum company. (Borthwick Institute/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
“The material was too fragile; the bubbles would explode without warning,” Wardlow wrote in “Bubble Mania.”
“Also, they [the bubbles] It had a nasty habit of sticking to the face of the blower. The only way to remove it from a person’s skin was to rub it with turpentine. ”
The chewy resin that generates bubbles has proven to be the elusive holy grail of gum.
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Diemer was undaunted. He spent a year testing the recipe at his home, apparently with the approval of his bosses, and apparently embarrassed by his low expectations.
When the young accountant walked into the office in August 1928 carrying five pounds of the latest homemade gum, his colleagues were stunned. He blew the biggest bubble anyone had ever seen.
“It finally popped soft,” Wardlow writes, “and he easily peeled it off the skin.”
Fleer Co. bubble gum inventor Walter Diemer (not pictured) dyed his first batch pink in 1928 because it was the only food coloring available. Bubble gum remains mostly pink to this day. (Sebastian Carnath/Photo in association with Getty Images)
“I ate it! We all tried it,” Diemer later recalled. “I was really going crazy. I was blowing bubbles and bouncing all over the place!”
The company called it a double bubble. Deemer by the end of the year he had mastered the 300-pound batch.
The first 100 pieces were wrapped in toffee paper and brought to a local candy shop on December 26, 1928.
“I ate it! Everyone tried it too… they were blowing bubbles and jumping everywhere!”
Coincidentally, Freer had entered the baseball trading card business in 1923. Baseball card manufacturers quickly realized that adding bubble gum to their packaging was a great way to get kids to buy their products.
One of the many reasons children loved bubble gum was its unique pink color. This was a stroke of marketing genius by Fleer Co. and Diemer.
Not completely.
Bubble gum has been used to sell trading cards to children since shortly after its invention in 1928. These trading cards featuring the 1970s Swedish pop group Abba were sold at an auction in 2013. (SCANPIX Sweden/AFP via Getty Images)
On that day in December 1928, “pink food coloring was the only thing on hand,” Wardlow wrote. “He grabbed the bottle and dumped the bright liquid into a huge container.”
With a few exceptions, bubble gum never changes color.
“I accomplished something with my life.”
Walter Diemer died on January 8, 1998, on his 93rd birthday, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
His zest for life never waned.
A group of five children chew gum and blow bubbles in the Seattle, Washington area in 1979. (H. Armstrong Roberts/Classic Stock/Getty Images)
After his wife died in 1991, he moved to Lancaster, where “he was known as a free spirit who rode around town on a large tricycle,” the New York Times News Service wrote in his obituary. Ta.
He remarried in 1996 at the age of 91.
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Diemer’s impact on American life warranted a “too soon” comedy moment to be aired on “Saturday Night Live,” then a pioneer in cultural relevance, days after his death. .
“The inventor of bubble gum passed away this week,” Colin Quinn said on his “Weekend Update” segment. “His body was found buried under a movie seat.”
Diemer’s Dubble Bubble remains the standard for measuring bubble gum bubbles.
One author said, “It’s just fun to blow bubbles.” On the right, Seattle Mariners’ Ty France gives Julio Rodriguez a double bubble shower after his game-winning walk-off single against the Boston Red Sox on March 30, 2024 in Seattle, Washington. (Image; Arika Jenner/Getty Images)
Chad Fell of Alabama blew an epic 20-inch bubble gum on April 24, 2004. This is the largest known.
“He created a pink balloon by combining three pieces of double bubblegum,” Guinness World Records reports.
Deemer’s invention inspired a whole new category of music. “Bubblegum Pop” likens his candy to frivolous fun set to an upbeat, breezy tune.
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Ella Fitzgerald sang it on her 1939 recording “Chew, Chew, Chew (Your Bubble Gum).” An early example of this genre.
The Archies’ bubblegum-pop classic “Sugar, Sugar” was America’s best-selling song in 1969, a sweet ear candy enjoyed by just about everyone during the turmoil of the Vietnam War and civil unrest.
“He was known as a free spirit who rode around town on a big tricycle.”
Bubble gum helps sell books to children today.
Dozens of bubblegum-themed books are listed on online retailers.
“There’s something about bubble gum that immediately appeals to kids,” Wardlaw said. “Kids love the colors. It’s fun to blow bubbles, but it’s frustrating for parents.”
Bob Crane on the CBS television sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” (playing Colonel Robert E. Hogan). Fuller Brands “Hogan’s Heroes” Card Set with Bubble Gum Packaging, May 6, 1966. (CBS via Getty Images)
Mr. Diemer appears to have never received royalties for his invention.
However, he never left Freer and became a senior executive there. He helped popularize bubble gum in its early days, teaching salesmen how to blow bubbles.
This is a skill that millions of children around the world are happily learning at an early age.
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”He was very proud of it,” said his wife Florence Diemer, as reported in several obituaries.
“He told me, ‘I accomplished something with my life. I made children all over the world happy.'”
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