What Exactly Is Bubblegum Flavor — and Why Pink?
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 5 September 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, we all know the look and taste of bubblegum, but few people know where it came from. The first bubblegum was invented in 1928 by Walter Diemer, who used the only food dye available: pink. That color stuck, and so did the flavor — a blend of fruit notes now simply called “bubblegum.” Simon Whistler, from the Today I Found Out YouTube channel and its sister podcast, The Brain Food Show, shares the story of how bubblegum was created and how a simple candy became a lasting invention of the 20th century.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:14.1 | This is Le Habib, and this is our American stories. |
| 0:18.5 | Chewing gum has been around for centuries. |
| 0:22.5 | From the ancient Greeks to the American Indians, everyone's chewed it. But the best kind of gum bubble gum wasn't invented until |
| 0:29.3 | 1928. You to tell the story is Simon Whistler from the Today I Found out YouTube channel and |
| 0:36.4 | its sister, the Brain Food Show podcast. |
| 0:40.0 | Let's take a listen. |
| 0:41.7 | Bubble gum, the ambiguously flavored obnoxiously pink candy gum is the favorite treat of Violet Beauregard. |
| 0:48.7 | Now this little number right here is a four-door stage. |
| 0:51.1 | Violet, would you care to say a few words to the nation? |
| 0:53.2 | Here it is, Golden Ticket number three, and it's all mine. Tell us how it happened, Violet. Well, would you care to say a few words to the nation? Here it is, golden ticket number three, and it's all mine. |
| 0:55.9 | Tell us how it happened, Violet. Well, I'm a gum-trew normally, but when I heard about these ticket things of long, because I laid off the gum and switched to candy bars instead. Now, of course, I'm right back on gum. I chew it all day except at meal times when I stick it beyond my ear. Violet. Call it, Mother. |
| 0:51.5 | Now this piece of gum here is one that I've been chewing on for three months solid, and that's a world record. It's beating the record held by my best friend, Miss Cornelia Prince Medal. And was she mad? Hi, Cornelia, how are you, sweetie? Let me just butt in here for a moment to say that. First the story of how bubblegum became a thing at all. |
| 1:32.0 | In 1928, Walter Dymer was working as an accountant for the now-defunct candy and |
| 1:36.0 | baseball card manufacturer Fleer. |
| 1:38.4 | At this time, Flair was struggling financially, when then-presidents of the company, Gilbert |
| 1:42.4 | Mustin, hit upon the idea of creating |
| 1:44.6 | his own gum base to improve profit margins. |
| 1:47.7 | At the time, they bought their gum product from another manufacturer before repackaging |
| 1:52.3 | it and selling it. |
| 1:53.5 | Towards this end, Mustin began tinkering with recipes, but was frequently called away |
| 1:57.5 | from his work to answer the building's only phone, which was on the first floor while his office and the mixers were on the third. |
... |
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