When you look at a stick or chunk of bubble gum, it appears to be a simple product. Yet the efforts of many people, in many parts of the world, are needed to obtain the right ingredients. Making the finished product takes skill and care and requires special equipment. Bubble gum is made with five main ingredients: chewing gum base, sugar, softeners, flavorings, and colors. Each ingredient is described below:
Gum base puts the "chew" in regular chewing gum and the "bubble" in bubble gum. Rosin, a product of trees growing here in our own country, plays a part in enhancing the texture of gum base. Rosin comes from pine trees growing in the southeastern and southern parts of the United States. In recent years, science has developed new synthetic gum base materials which improve the texture of chewing gum when blended with natural ingredients.
Softeners are made with refined vegetable oil products. They help to blend the gum base ingredients and keep the gum soft and flexible by retaining the correct amount of moisture.
Sugar and corn sweeteners found in sugared bubble gum are used to provide the sweet characteristics of bubble gum, as well as to maintain the proper texture of the gum while chewing.
The most popular flavors in the United States are the fruit flavorings formulated with pure fruit extracts and other synthetic fruit flavorings blended together.
Approved colors are added to improve the appearance and fun aspects of the bubble gum.
Quality Control specialists carefully inspect and test all ingredients before processing to make sure that every batch of Amurol gum is pure and wholesome. Also, each batch of gum is tested during the processing operation to ensure the finest quality.
The manufacture of takes place in spotless, air-conditioned rooms and is closely monitored to meet the high standards of quality. The process begins with the accurate weighing of all the ingredients. The gum base materials go into the mixer first (a large vessel with rotating blades). Next, the sweeteners, softeners, and colors are transferred and added. Following the initial mixing, the flavors are added, and then blending is continued very slowly, for just the right amount of time required by the formula. At this point, the gum looks like stiff, colored bread dough.
When the blending is completed, the gum passes between rollers that press it into a flowing ribbon. The thick ribbon of fragrant gum moves through a sheeting machine, which is a series of rollers, each pair of rollers being set closer together, reducing the gum's thickness in stages. When the rollers press it to the exact thickness desired, the ribbon of gum is scored in a pattern of single sticks, long tapes or prepared in another way for packaging.
The next stop is the conditioning room. Here the temperature and humidity are carefully controlled to make sure the finished gum will stay fresh.
The process for making chunk bubble gum is essentially the same except that after the ingredients are blended, the mixture goes through an extruding process. This process changes the bubble gum into a solid, rope-like form. To visualize what happens during extrusion, imagine pushing toothpaste out of a tube. This rope is then put on a moving belt and passed through a conditioning tunnel to cool it and develop its texture. Immediately after this, the rope-shaped gum is cut into one-inch long chunks and individually wrapped.
The final stage is packaging. Because of the various shapes and sizes of the various gums, packaging must take place on special machines. These machines package each gum according to its type, whether it's Shredded Bubble Gum or Bubble Tape or plain Bubble Gum.