The story
American Chicle Company
The American Chicle Company was incorporated in Trenton, New Jersey, on June 2, 1899. Its market capitalization was $9,000,000 with one third issued as preferred stock and 6% with cumulative dividends. The business was a merger of the major chewing gum concerns at the time: Adams Sons & Company in Brooklyn; Beeman Chemical Company; W. J. White & Sons in Cleveland; J. P. Primley in Chicago; Kis-Me Gum Company Louisville, Kentucky; and S. T. Britten & Co. in Toronto. The corporation operated factories and gum forests in Yucatan. William J. White served as the company's first president and Thomas Adams Jr. Was the first chairman.
In 1914, the company acquired Chiclets from the Fleer Chewing Gum Company of Philadelphia. It also acquired Dentyne in 1916. In 1919, American Chicle bought land at Degnon Terminal in Long Island City to build a new factory. On January 8, 1920, Don Ricardo Moreira, of San Salvador of the Coldwell & Moreira firm, registered American Chicle Co. trademarks in El Salvador. In 1923, the company moved into its new 550,000 square foot, $2 million factory and headquarters. The building could house over 500 employees and produced five million packages of chewing gum per day. For decades, the building's Dentyne and Chiclet sign became a landmark for travelers entering Long Island. By 1935, American Chicle had
15% of the North American gum market, behind the William Wrigley Jr. Company and Beech-Nut Packing Company.
American Chicle utilized Dancer Fitzgerald Sample in 1950 to promote its products via radio, newspapers, and television.
American Chicle Group
American Chicle was acquired by the pharmaceutical company Warner-Lambert in 1962, with combined sales that year being estimated at around $300,000,000. During the 1970s, American Chicle discontinued Black Jack and Clove in order to focus resources to the sugarless Trident and liquid-filled Freshen-Up. Beemans was removed from the US market and remained available only in Canada. In 1976, an explosion at the American Chicle Company factory killed six workers and injured more than 40. It remained closed for five weeks following the incident. In 1976, Bubblicious was released to compete against Bubble Yum.
The company's Long Island City factory was shut down at the end of 1981. Gum-making operations were moved to facilities in Anaheim, California and Rockford, Illinois. The Anaheim factory was closed in 1985 during a period of consolidation for the company. In the spring of 1986, American Chicle introduced Sticklets, a stick gum version of Chiclets. Later that year, the company brought Black Jack, Beemans, and Clove gum back into production. In 1988, Warner-Lambert acquired Junior Mints, Charleston Chew, Sugar Daddy, among other brands, from RJR Nabisco and integrated them into the American Chicle Group.
Adams
The American Chicle Company was renamed Adams in 1997. Warner-Lambert was acquired by Pfizer in 2000 for $90.2 billion. After a two-year ban on selling the company's gum assets, Cadbury Schweppes purchased Adams in 2002 for $4.9 billion. Kraft Foods purchased Cadbury in 2010 for $19.6 billion. When Kraft split into two companies in 2012, the Adams gum unit remained under Mondelez International. Chiclets chewing gum was discontinued in 2016, but returned to production 2019.
By 2018, Mondelez sold off the Black Jack, Beemans, and Clove brands. It then sold the remainder of its United States, Canada, and European gum assets to Perfetti Van Melle in 2023.
From Wikipedia’s article on American Chicle Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3