Better Together: Chewing Gum for a Happy Life

Chewing gum is famous all over the world. Adults and children love it in all its array of flavours and colours. But not many are aware that this staple of modern life was invented almost two hundred years ago with 23 September considered chewing gum's birthday.

Sputnik presents you with archived photos of advertisements for chewing gum: have a look at how people chewed in the past.

1 / 10

Dr. Morris Nafash, whose job it is as research director for the Bazooka Bubble Gum Company to test the texture and elasticity of the gum and to develop new flavors, uses an outside caliper to measure a bubble blown by Josephine Zack on 16 September 1949 in New York. Dr. Nafash, 49, from Brooklyn, came to his post after eleven years as research associated of Columbia University's department of chemical engineering. He blows about a hundred bubbles a day and thinks it isn't probable that kids will ever blow bubbles much bigger than at present because "the kid's face gets in the way."

2 / 10

Adams Pepsin Tutti Frutti Gum, chewing gum packaging and gum, "For relief of indigestion and dsypepsia".

CC BY-SA 3.0 / Science History Institute / Adams Pepsin Tutti Frutti Gum

3 / 10

1st Ave with Grand Pacific Hotel and advertisement for Yucatan Gum, Seattle, 1917-1920.

4 / 10

An advertisement for Rooster chewing gum in an Iranian magazine, 1968

5 / 10

Young gum venders selling chewing gum near the National Theatre.

6 / 10

Picture taken on 23 July 1947 of an advertising poster for the Warrens chewing gums featuring Lady Iris Mountbatten, cousin by marriage of the King of England George VI.

7 / 10

Raymond Duke a shoeshine boy, blows a bubble from his gum as he shines shoes of Walter T. Shirley, former New York City Commissioner of Commerce, 18 October 1954.

8 / 10

Latest craze in these parts among youngsters is false lips of chewing gum. Once the lips soften and become difficult to wear, the kids chew them for bubble gum. The exotic trio (left to right): Natalie Kozadoy, 13; Vincent Riggio, 11; and Evelyn Bondurc, 12, in Newark, N.J., shown 21 February 1947.

9 / 10

Robert Mitchum's secretary, Reva Frederick, teaches Charles McGraw (right) how to get full-sized results from a piece of bubble gum for the McGraw's role as a bubble gum expert in a scene for "The Korean Story". Mitchum, seen here 28 January1952, seems to be duly impressed as he kids McGraw on the size of his bubbles.

10 / 10

"Better Together!", advertising of Warren's (chewing gum brand of Bowman Gum), 1945.