For many of us, the flavor of bubble gum is the flavor of childhood. Of course, it’s the taste of bubbles: attempted, successful, and snapped over noses. But it’s also the flavor of jelly beans, ice cream, slushies, and also medicine (which some of us used to sneak out of the fridge even when we weren’t sick). But while Skittles, Starburst, and Laffy Taffy all imitate the flavor of real fruits, there’s no bubble gum berry growing in our gardens. So what is bubble gum flavor?
In a recent listener-inspired episode of Gastropod, hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley set out to answer this question, along with some others submitted by their fans, including whether meal kits live up to their environmental claims and if all rooibos tea really comes from one mountain range in South Africa. Listen to the full episode for the answers to all of these fascinating questions — and read on for an edited excerpt from the episode in which Cynthia and Nicky chat with bubble gum scientist Gwendolyn Graff to get to the bottom of bubble gum’s many mysteries.
GASTROPOD LISTENER VALARIE: What the heck is bubble gum flavor? When did this become the flavor of bubble gum? Are there standard bubble gum flavors everywhere and are they the same? Has it always been like this? It’s become a weird fixation.
CYNTHIA GRABER: Let’s start with the first question: What the heck is it? Why can I imagine what it tastes like when I bite down, but I can’t exactly describe it?
GWENDOLYN GRAFF: I would say that’s because bubble gum is what we would call a fantasy flavor. You’re not going to be able to pick a bubble gum off of a tree. It’s definitely made up.
NICOLA TWILLEY: This is Gwendolyn Graff, and she is a real-life bubble gum scientist who works in bubble gum R&D. Yes, kids, that is a job you can have when you grow up.
GRABER: Fantasy flavor is also a real thing. For instance, you can’t find blue raspberries in the world, but blue raspberry flavor is in Jolly Rancher candies, and popsicles…
TWILLEY: But even though bubble gum is a fantasy flavor, it is based on real flavors.
GRAFF: I would most likely describe it as orange plus cherry. If you got two Jelly Bellies and you put an orange and a cherry together, you would mix them together and you would say it”s bubble gum flavor.
GRABER: Mystery solved! It’s like math: cherry plus orange plus a lot of sweetener equals — bubble gum! But, given it’s a fantasy flavor, once upon a time it didn’t exist. So who is the Einstein who came up with this new universal equation?
TWILLEY: To answer that, we need to go back to the invention of bubble gum itself, which is a story we told in our chewing gum episode a couple of years ago. Bubble gum was invented in 1928 by a guy called Walter Deemer who, believe it or not, was an accountant. He worked at this chewing gum company, and coming up with a gum that was more elastic and less sticky, so you could blow a bubble — that was his side hustle.
GRAFF: But actually the first time he made bubble gum, he actually made it a mint flavor. He put in some mint oils, because at the time that’s what they did with gum.
GRABER: It caught on, and blowing bubbles quickly became popular with kids, but the mint flavor wasn’t a big hit. Gwendolyn told us nobody knows exactly when someone at the company mixed some fruit flavors together for their new bubble-y gum.
GRAFF: I’m assuming just because it became associated with a kid’s product, they started going towards the fruit flavors. Because when you look at gum as a whole, mints tend to be in the adult flavors and kid flavors tend to be in the fruits. You can see exceptions to those, but that’s mostly how it goes.
TWILLEY: However they landed on this sweet orange and cherry mix, it became the standard bubble gum flavor.
GRABER: And, as time went on, people started using bubble gum flavoring for things that aren’t bubble gum.
TWILLEY: I literally saw bubble gum flavor soda on the shelf at a supermarket last week. And I did not feel even remotely tempted to try it. But I am clearly not the target market.
GRAFF: I’ve seen lots of things. I mean, lots of candies and lollipops and stuff that’s in the confectionary market. But even, I remember one year, I think 7-11 did a bubble gum flavored slushie. You get drinks, and obviously ice cream.
TWILLEY: And, for grownups who still love kid flavors, you can get bubble gum energy drinks and bubble gum vodka.
GRABER: I am also not the target audience for this, I think it sounds pretty gross. And another thing that at least our listener Valarie’s son thinks is disgusting is bubble gum-flavored medicine.
VALARIE: They will add it as a flavor to help it go down more easily. But it’s terrible. It makes it even worse. And so now, anything bubble gum flavor is disgusting to him. He thinks I’m trying to drug him every time I give him a Jelly Belly that’s bubble gum flavor.
TWILLEY: Clearly a spoonful of bubble gum does not necessarily help the medicine go down. But Valarie wanted to know: Are all bubble gum flavors the same?
GRABER: Gwendolyn told us even within the world of bubble gum flavor there are nuances — shades of pink, let’s say.
GRAFF: When I was a kid we had Bazooka. And that one has a slight little mint in it, like a slight little bit of wintergreen in it. So it can kind of vary.
GRABER: But even if these flavors vary slightly from brand to brand, they’re still recognizable as bubble gum, and they’re still popular today.
GRAFF: I’d say that if you’re strictly talking about bubble gum, bubble gum is probably the biggest bubble gum flavor.
TWILLEY: But not all gum that you can blow bubbles with is bubble gum flavor, if that makes sense. Bubble gum comes in plenty of other flavors.
GRAFF: Usually the first fruit that’s the most common is strawberry. And then it tends to kind of go back and forth between grape and watermelon as the second and third.
GRABER: Gwendolyn told us that other countries have popular flavors that are a little unusual to us here in the US.
GRAFF: I happen to be in the U.K. right now, and their really popular flavor is black currant.
TWILLEY: It is indeed, we love black currant everything. Our purple Skittles and other sweets are all black currant flavored, not grape. But Gwendolyn thinks it tastes a little bit like dirty socks.
GRAFF: And so it’s funny, because as a developer in the States, you’re like, ugh! I’m not really a fan of this flavor. But you just have to get acquainted with what it should taste like, and then make sure that you’re replicating it.
GRABER: We were wondering if Gwendolyn could replicate any flavor in bubble gum form, and Gwendolyn said actually, yeah.
TWILLEY: Her own career is testament to that. She has come up with a lot of new bubble gum flavors in her time.
GRAFF: If I had to give you a number, it would be in the hundreds. Definitely.
GRABER: Some of those flavors were seasonal ones.
GRAFF: We had summer frenzy flavors where we’d put new flavors out. We did like a new product every couple weeks because kids just like to try new things, new things, new things.
TWILLEY: These were limited time specials like pink lemonade and “triple play” tropical. So far, so relatively normal. But in the safety of the R&D lab, Gwendolyn and her colleagues got up to some real Willy Wonka stuff.
GRAFF: I’ve tried lots of things. We’ve tried drink flavors, we’ve tried herb flavors, we’ve tried vegetable flavors, we’ve tried meat flavors, we’ve tried pizza flavors, we’ve tried cheese flavors. There were some funny ones, like — somebody was like, can we do a beef jerky? Oh my goodness. Do you know how weird a beef jerky gum is? You keep wanting to swallow it. It’s so weird. It did taste like beef jerky, but it kind of just messed with your mind. And there are some flavors that have been pretty terrible: like mayonnaise flavor, liquid-filled mayonnaise flavor.
GRABER: I’m going to stick with the classic, myself.
