Black Jack (gum) facts for kids
Black Jack is a special kind of chewing gum that tastes like anise, which is a flavor similar to licorice. It's made by an American company called Gerrit J. Verburg Co.
Contents
The Story of Black Jack Gum
The history of chewing gum, and Black Jack gum, started a long time ago with a man named Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. He was a famous general and former president of Mexico. In 1869, he was living in New Jersey.
Santa Anna brought a natural gum called chicle from Mexico. He hoped to sell it to get money. He met an inventor from New York named Thomas Adams. Adams first tried to use chicle to make a type of rubber, but it didn't work out.
How Chewing Gum Was Invented
Adams noticed that Santa Anna liked to chew the chicle. People like the ancient Mayans had chewed it for a long time. Even though his rubber experiments failed, Adams got an idea. He boiled some chicle in his kitchen to make a chewing gum.
He gave some of this new gum to a local store. People liked it and bought it! This encouraged Adams to start making more.
The First Flavored Gum
In 1871, Thomas Adams got a special paper called a patent for a machine that made gum. This helped him make a lot of chicle-based gum. His first gum was plain, with no flavor, but it sold well.
Adams then started trying out different flavors. In 1884, he added licorice flavor to his gum. He called this new invention Adams' Black Jack. This was the first flavored gum ever sold in the United States! It was also the first gum to be sold in handy sticks.
Black Jack Gum was very popular for many years. It was sold until the 1970s, when sales slowed down and production stopped. But don't worry, it came back! It was brought back in 1986 and then again in 2019, so new generations could enjoy its unique taste.
Who Owns Black Jack Gum?
Over the years, Black Jack gum has been owned by different companies.
In 1962, a company called Warner–Lambert bought the American Chicle Company, which owned the Adams brand. Later, in 1997, the American Chicle Company changed its name to Adams.
Then, in 2000, a big company called Pfizer bought Warner-Lambert. Pfizer decided to sell all its candy brands, including Adams, to Cadbury in 2003. This part of Cadbury became known as Cadbury Adams.
More recently, in 2019, the Gerrit J. Verburg Company bought the Black Jack gum brand. They bought it from Mondelez International, which was the parent company of Cadbury at the time. So now, Gerrit J. Verburg Co. is the company that makes Black Jack gum!
