Chewing Gum

Overview

After Orange Balloon gives an impressive demonstration of his gum-bubble blowing abilities, we learn that chewing gum has been around for over 3,000 years, helping everyone from the Egyptians to the ancient Romans to relax and concentrate. We check out the gum base used to make gum, a tasteless substance composed of chicle, waxes, fat and rubber and more. We go inside a gum factory and watch how gum base is turned into actual gum. We see that the base is turned into a hot strip, then glycerin, sugar/imitation sugar and coloring are added, then it's all mixed together. The batter looks a lot like bread batter and big rollers are used to turn it into a thin sheet that's cut into strips. It's all checked for size and weight and it has to be placed in a conditioning room to cool. After more sugar mix and coloring is added, then it's time for packaging. There are machines that package it all, from bubble gum to small chiclets and it all has to run very precisely, or it won't be packaged pro

Episode Information