Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Did You Know That...


Chiclets got their inspiration for the name of their small coated squares of gum from the name of one of the ingredients in gum?

Wikipedia says:
Chicle is the natural gum from Manilkara chicle, which is a tropical evergreen tree native to Central America. The tree ranges from Veracruz in Mexico south to Atlántico in Colombia. It was traditionally used in chewing gum. While the Wrigley Company was a prominent user of this material, today there are only a few companies that still make chewing gum from natural chicle. This is because by the 1960s chicle was replaced by butadiene-based synthetic rubber which was cheaper to manufacture.

And that leads to another blog.

1 comment:

kathi said...

Just the kind of tiny factoid that makes your site so fun. I grew up knowing that 'chilcle" was Spanish for "gum."