American Chicle Company facts for kids
The American Chicle Company was a big chewing gum company. It was started by Thomas Adams, Jr., along with Edward E. Beeman and Jonathan Primle. This company became very important in the history of chewing gum.
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Thomas Adams: The Gum Pioneer
Thomas Adams (born May 4, 1818 – died February 7, 1905) was an American inventor. He is known as one of the people who started the chewing gum industry.
Adams got the idea for gum while working for a former Mexican leader, Antonio López de Santa Anna. This leader chewed a natural gum called chicle. Adams first tried to turn chicle into rubber for tires. When that didn't work, he decided to make it into chewing gum.
In 1859, Adams made his first plain chicle gum balls. He called them Adams New York Gum No. 1. They sold out very quickly!
First Flavored Gums
In 1870, Adams created the first flavored gum. It was black licorice and he named it Black Jack. He sold it from a warehouse in New York City.
A year later, in 1871, Adams received a patent for the first machine that made chewing gum. By 1888, his company opened a factory in Brooklyn, New York. His Tutti-Frutti gum was also one of the first gums sold in vending machines. Adams retired from the business in 1898. His son, Thomas Jr., took over the company.
The American Chicle Company Story
Starting the Company
The American Chicle Company officially started on June 2, 1899, in Trenton, New Jersey. It brought together several major chewing gum companies of that time. These included Adams Sons & Company, Beeman Chemical Company, W. J. White & Sons, J. P. Primley, Kis-Me Gum Company, and S. T. Britten & Co.
The new company had factories and even owned gum forests in Yucatan. William J. White was the first president. Thomas Adams Jr. became the first chairman.
Growing the Business
In 1914, the company bought Chiclets gum. They also acquired Dentyne gum in 1916. In 1919, American Chicle bought land in Long Island City, New York, to build a new factory.
By 1923, the company moved into its large new factory and headquarters. This building was 550,000 square feet and cost $2 million. It could hold over 500 employees. The factory produced five million packages of chewing gum every day! For many years, the Dentyne and Chiclet signs on the building were a famous landmark for people entering Long Island.
By 1935, American Chicle had 15% of the chewing gum market in North America. They were behind the William Wrigley Jr. Company and Beech-Nut Packing Company. In the 1950s, American Chicle used advertising agencies to promote its products on radio, in newspapers, and on television.
Changes and New Owners
In 1962, a pharmaceutical company called Warner–Lambert bought American Chicle. In the 1970s, American Chicle stopped making Black Jack and Clove gums. They wanted to focus on sugar-free gums like Trident and liquid-filled Freshen-Up. Beemans gum was removed from the US market but stayed available in Canada.
In 1976, there was an accident at the American Chicle Company factory. It caused injuries to many workers and the factory closed for five weeks. Also in 1976, the company released Bubblicious bubble gum.
The Long Island City factory closed at the end of 1981. Gum making moved to other factories in California and Illinois. In 1986, American Chicle brought back Black Jack, Beemans, and Clove gum. Later that year, Warner-Lambert bought other candy brands like Junior Mints and Charleston Chew. These were added to the American Chicle Group.
Becoming Adams and Beyond
The American Chicle Company changed its name to Adams in 1997. In 2000, another company, Pfizer, bought Warner-Lambert.
Later, in 2002, Cadbury Schweppes bought Adams for $4.9 billion. Then, in 2010, Kraft Foods bought Cadbury. When Kraft split into two companies in 2012, the Adams gum unit became part of Mondelez International. Chiclets chewing gum was stopped in 2016 but returned in 2019.
By 2018, Mondelez sold off the Black Jack, Beemans, and Clove brands. In 2023, Mondelez sold the rest of its gum business in the United States, Canada, and Europe to Perfetti Van Melle.
Products
- Adams Sour
- Beemans
- Black Jack
- Bubblicious
- Certs
- Chewels
- Chiclets
- Clove
- Clorets
- Dentyne
- Freshen-Up
- Trident
See also
- American Chicle Company Building, New Orleans
- Charles Ranlett Flint
