INTHEBLACK February 2023 - Magazine - Page 68
C L O S I N G T H E B O O KS
Story Nigel Bowen
The accountant behind bubble gum
Walter E. Diemer never got rich off his famous creation, but he brought joy to billions.
In 1928, in the US, Philadelphia’s Fleer
Chewing Gum Company, which sold both
chewing gum and baseball cards, was
struggling. Despite a booming economy,
Fleer’s gum was not selling.
Walter E. Diemer, aged 23 at the
time, oversaw Fleer’s books, not its
manufacturing activities. After Fleer’s
president lost interest in creating a product
with lower input costs and more consumer
appeal, Diemer – an accountant by trade –
spent a year tinkering with recipes.
Diemer was hoping to develop a
new kind of gum that can be blown into
a bubble.
One day, Diemer had Fleer’s factory
workers mix gum base with wintergreen,
peppermint, vanilla and cinnamon, and
then add some food dye. The dye was
pink, because it was the only colour
Diemer had on-hand. To this day, pink is
the default colour for bubble gum.
68 INTHEBLACK February 2023
Diemer cut the resulting concoction,
which came to be called “Dubble
Bubble”, into 100 pieces and sent it to
the local store, which sold it for one
penny a piece – equivalent to US$0.17
(A$0.25) today. Within hours, it was all
gone. Then the Great Depression hit, and
bubble gum, a cheap treat for children
and more than a few adults, took off in
Prohibition-era America.
In the following decades, bubble gum
spread across the globe, with the notable
exception of Singapore.
Neither Diemer nor his employer
patented bubble gum, so they did not
get rich as they might have.
While Diemer died in 1998, aged 93,
Fleer ceased operations in 2005.
The chewing and bubble gum market
remains in rude good health, and is
projected to be worth US$40.6 billion
(A$59.4 billion) by 2028.
Above: “Dubble Bubble”, invented in
1928 by Walter E. Diemer.
Main image: Children compete in a
bubble gum blowing contest, 1948,
Nashville, US.