bubblegum
People have enjoyed chewing gum-like substances in many lands and from very early times. Some of these materials were thickened resin and latex from certain kinds of trees. Others were various sweet grasses, leaves, grains and waxes. For centuries the ancient Greeks chewed mastic gum. This is the resin obtained from the bark of the mastic tree, a shrub-like tree found mainly in Greece and Turkey. From the Indians of New England, the American colonists learned to chew the gum-like resin that formed on spruce trees when the bark was cut. Lumps of spruce gum were sold in the eastern United States during the early 1800s, making it the first commercial chewing gum in this country. In about 1850, sweetened paraffin wax became popular and eventually exceeded spruce gum in popularity. In 1845, after he was defeated by the Americans in Texas, Mexican General Santa Anna was exiled to New York. Like many of his countrymen, Santa Anna chewed chicle. One day he introduced it to inventor Thomas Adams, who began experimenting with it as a substitute for rubber. Adams tried to make toys, masks, and rain boots out of chicle, but every experiment failed.