Bubblegum is a type of chewing gum that is especially designed for blowing bubbles. It is usually pink in color and has a particular flavor. Bubble gum tends to be less viscous than standard chewing gum in order to facilitate bubble blowing. Some brands are especially non-sticky, such as Bubble Tape, Big League Chew, Bubble Yum and Bubblicious.

In the United States, bubble gum is often dispensed by gumball machines. Large gumballs usually cost 25 cents or 20 cents Australian each, although prices vary depending on size and "entertainment value" of the dispensing machine.

One method of blowing bubbles is to flatten the gum against the roof of your mouth then press it up against the back of your teeth. Next, you push part of it out of your mouth with your tongue then blow into the stretched gum.

To blow bigger bubbles, the gum is chewed for at least five or ten minutes before starting to blow in order to remove as much sugar as possible from the gum. Stretching the gum more thinly with the tongue can help too, as can chewing more gum and so increasing the amount that is available to be blown into the bubble.

Blowing a bubble for too long, so that the surface of the gum is stretched too far, may result in the bubble tearing. Such a tear may be gradual or abrupt; gradual tearing will often merely lead to further air blown into the bubble immediately escaping, but abrupt tearing may cause the bubble to burst altogether. Surface tension within burst bubbles often causes them to fly back towards the face of the blower, covering the blower with a thin layer of gum.

Burst bubbles tend to descend in flight, but it is not unknown for burst bubbles to fly up as well as down, covering your nose, your eyelids, your eyebrows or even scalp hair with gum. This layer of gum can normally be peeled off by hand, but occasionally needs to be washed off. Bubble gum will tend to stick to itself in preference to skin, so temporarily pressing a wad of gum onto your skin will usually help to remove sticky residue.

To remove gum from clothes or other fabric items, harden the gum by applying an ice cube to it. It should be possible to scrape away the hardened gum from the fabric with a dull blade. To remove gum from hair, apply an oily substance such as vegetable oil or peanut butter.

History

The first bubble gum formulation, Blibber-Blubber, was developed in 1906 by Frank Fleer. However, the gum was never marketed.

According to a 1970s Smithsonian magazine article, Walter Diemer, an employee of the Frank H. Fleer Company, improved the Blibber-Blubber formulation in 1928, resulting in the first commercially successful bubble gum, Dubble Bubble.

However, the true inventor and patentee of Dubble Bubble has yet to be publicly acknowledged, mostly due to confusion created by a popular 1960s game show called What's My Line. Seeking the inventor of bubble gum to include in its line-up of guests, the writers for What's My Line consulted with the Frank H. Fleer Company. At 35 years subsequent to his invention of Dubble Bubble, the true creator of the Dubble Bubble formula, Gilbert Mustin, Sr., was deceased. Realizing that the publicity opportunity was too valuable to decline, the Fleer Corp. decided to cast Walter Diemer (Gilbert Mustin's accountant, who knew nothing about chemistry at the time of bubble gum's invention) as the charmingly haphazard inventor of bubble gum. In the 1970s, the Smithsonian magazine followed suit, publishing an article on the inventor of bubble gum, whom they claimed to be Walter Diemer. After interviewing the elderly Diemer, who at this point was consumed by senility, Smithsonian portrayed Walter Diemer as the undisputed hero of children across the world. To this day, Diemer is publicly acknowledged as the accountant who accidentally invented Dubble Bubble. So far, no publication has acknowledged the fact that Gilbert Mustin's name lies on the original 1928 patent for Dubble Bubble.

Gilbert Mustin colored his creation pink because it was the only food coloring he had at the time. Dubble Bubble's pink color set a tradition for nearly all bubble gums to follow.

During World War II, another gum manufacturer, The Topps Company, marketed a brand of bubblegum under the name Bazooka. Beginning in 1953, Topps added a small comic strip packaged with the gum featuring the character Bazooka Joe who became the newest craze in the bubblegum industry.

In 2000, Dubble Bubble instituted a national bubble blowing contest in the United States for children aged 12 and below held at branches of Wal-Mart. This has been repeated every year since then. In 2003, the contest spread to the United Kingdom.

Brands of gum