Pop! Eeeeewwww! All over my face! When these sticky situations occur, tell me, do you ever wonder who invented this sticky substance? If you hate it for getting all over your face, or if you love it for its flavor, you might want to look into this. I have a feeling that you will have a whole new thought about bubble gum.

Ordinary gum doesn't blow bubbles, as you probably already know. Nobody knows exactly who or why somebody would have thought of blowing bubbles with it. But when chicle gum got to North America, grown men wanted to make a kind of elastic gum that could blow bubbles.

In 1906 a man named Frank Henry Fleer developed a kind of gum that did that. He came up with a unique name for it, too. Blibber-Blubber. If it doesn't sound familiar, it's because it hasn't been sold since. Frank Henry Fleer worked at it, but it was too sticky. He had to stop making it.

But still, the workers for the Fleer corporation tried. Many years later, the company was handed over to Frank Fleer's son-in-law, a man named Walter Diemer. He was experimenting with a new bubble gum mix. He was trying to produce a large but dry bubble that wouldn't stick too much. He put the mixture in his mouth and... blew a HUGE bubble! It was perfect, and when it popped, it peeled right off his nose! Bubble gum was then invented!