NYC EATS

“A lot of times I’ll come in for a meeting chewing gum and I’ll forget I’m chewing it...I’ve started to wonder if that’s why I didn’t get certain movies.” - Jennifer Lawrence

People love to chew on stuff. Human beings have been chomping on non-food substances since the dawn of time, just for the pleasure and to relieve tension. The first known chewing gum was found in 5000 year-old settlements in Finland. Many ancient cultures, including the Egyptians, Greeks and Aztecs, chewed on natural saps, resins and beeswax. Native Americans taught white settlers how to chew spruce tree sap and tobacco. City kids would even chew on tar from a freshly-paved street. But it took New York City photographer and glassmaker Thomas Adams to invent the chewing gum industry.

It all started in 1869, when Adams met General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who had massacred hundreds of Texans at the Battle of the Alamo. Santa Anna was living in exile in Staten Island (a pretty good place to hide from angry Texans.) He had brought with him a shipment of chicle, the milky latex of the Manilkara tree. He and Adams tried to re-purpose the chicle into a synthetic substitute for rubber, which was in high demand but scarce and expensive. If successful, the pair would rake in millions. Alas, it was not to be. Every experiment to create chicle tires, boots, toys and masks failed miserably. A year’s worth of work went down the drain, and one ton of useless chicle almost followed it.

But then Adams remembered how Santa Anna, like many other Mexicans, would chew on the stuff. He bought the whole ton of chicle from the General and, with the help of his son Thomas Jr., formed it into small balls wrapped in wax paper. They offered the unflavored gum to a local drugstore, and it was a big hit!

Adams and son turned the remainder of their sticky stock into gumballs, wrapping them in colored papers and asking drugstores to take it on consignment. Within days, purchase orders came in for “Adams’ New York Gum No. 1 – Snapping and Stretching,” as he called the product. He set up an operation to manufacture large quantities of his New York Gum, inventing an ingenious gum-making machine which he patented in 1871. He packaged his product in boxes featuring a picture of the City Hall area.

Adams’ gum-making process involved gathering blocks of hardened chicle which were broken up, screened and strained before being mixed with sweeteners and flavorings during cooking. The resulting mass was pressed between rollers, cooled, sugared, cut and wrapped. Thus, the “sticks” of gum we know today replaced gumballs.

Success followed success. In 1871, Adams added licorice to his product, inventing the first flavored gum in the world. Black Jack became a massive seller, followed by Tutti-Frutti. In 1888, he transformed the retail food industry by building and installing the world’s first vending machine, located in a New York subway station. It offered Black Jack or Tutti Frutti for a penny. Soon most every station had Adams machines, eventually selling 134 million pieces of gum. Hundreds of stuffed-full penny bags were collected daily and deposited in the Federal Reserve.

After acquiring several smaller gum makers, Adams formed the American Chicle Company in 1899. The next year a brand new product was introduced: a candy-coated gum called Chiclets, which became the company’s best-seller. Thomas Adams passed away in 1905 at the age of 87. 

American Chicle continued to innovate and launch new products, including Pepsin, Beemans, Clove and Teaberry. In 1920 they built a massive plant on Thompson Avenue in Long Island City. After World War II, various waxes, plastics and synthetic rubber replaced chicle as the base for chewing gum. In 1951 American Chicle introduced a chlorophyll gum named Clorets, and in 1961 the world’s first sugarless gum was launched, Trident. During the space race, astronauts were supplied with the company’s Dentyne gum (but to prevent floating gumwads, NASA required them to swallow it.)

Disaster struck in 1976 when workers making the new Freshen-Up gum during the overnight shift experienced a tremendous explosion, tearing through four floors of the factory and jettisoning machinery onto the street, crushing a car. Windows were shattered for blocks, and 28 workers were critically injured. It turned out that a chemical named magnesium stearate, used to keep Freshen-Up from sticking together, had ignited. The plant was closed, and production moved to Mexico, the original source of chewing gum!

Today, chewing gum sales total about $5 billion annually. Many of the “old-time” flavors which Adams created have been re-introduced as nostalgic treats. New York’s own Thomas Adams will forever be remembered as the father of the chewing gum industry.

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