A n d r e w s G u m W o r l d

Chewing Gum Posters, originally uploaded by Phil McGrady.

IMAGE: Media.

Clemenger BBDO, an ad agency in Australia, has helped Wrigley plunge into the world of social media by creating The 5 Feed, a website designed to help the gum company “connect with young people who increasingly demand digital involvement and greater creativity; ‘an audience that is seeking, sharing and remixing culture.’”

In a piece earlier this summer in Media, it described the agency’s creation of The 5 Feed site, “a social platform that invites the public to download and remix works from commissioned Australian designers, artists and musicians.”

 You can explore that site, and do your own remixing of culture, here.

ps Wrigley 5 gum flavo(u)r translation guide from the Land Down Under:

Pulse (Australia) = Lush (North America)

Electro = Rain

Cobalt = Cobalt

IMAGE: oleole.com.

A Brazilian futebol/soccer player, José da Silva Aloísio, discovered the threatening drawbacks of chewing gum and running into fellow players. As The New York Times reported last week:

Aloisio, a striker for Vasco da Gama, wound up in the hospital after colliding with an opponent and choking on his gum during a second-division game Tuesday. He was released from the hospital and avoided serious injury.

While Aloísio doesn’t remember much of the injury — after which he stopped breathing momentarily — the accident has inspired a new approach for the mingling of futebol and chiclete:

“I don’t remember a lot,” Aloisio told local media Wednesday. “I only remember the doctor taking the gum out. I have never been scared like this — no more chewing gum for me.”

IMAGE: Nate Robertson blog.

Nate Robertson (that’s him in a pic from his own blog, chewing gum) has appeared in these pages before as part of the Gum Time tradition that inspires Detroit Tigers rallies (earlier, we included a great shot from Flickr of the animated score board from a Tigers game featuring the rally-worthy, gum-chewing efforts of Mr. Robertson).

As he notes, his blog got its title from this activity:

Along the way, it seems I also am becoming known for chewing huge wads of bubblegum to start Tiger rallies. That’s where the name for this blog comes in.

And, later he indicates that his interests are:

 Going after a World Series title and chewing as much bubble gum as I can fit into my mouth to help start Tiger rallies.

Which is why, of course, that today’s news from Major League Baseball is a bit disconcerting to gum connoisseurs and that is, sadly, that the tradition is coming to an end. As an article today notes:

Robertson’s superstition to throw wads of gum into his mouth became a Detroit phenomenon in 2006 during the summer and then during the Tigers’ run to the World Series. Eventually, it grew a little too big, and he lost his taste for constantly chewing gum in the late innings.

You can read all the details here.

 
PHOTO: Councillor Peter Goody, Croydon Guardian

We’ve not often included gum poetry in these posts; it turns out to be a fairly specialized field (although the writer and poet Roald Dahl famously included a gum chewer, Violet Beauregarde, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). However, our friends in Croydon, UK, who take their gum clean-up fairly seriously (we’ve visited the village before with its gum cleaning efforts, including in one of the very first posts of AndrewsGumWorld) — see one of the anti-gum tossing campaigns by the Redbridge Council above which involved gum targets — ran a competition last fall which offered local residents to wax poetic about gum.

There were three winners in the campaign coordinated by the Croydon Business Improvement Disrict (BID), and they were featured in a fall issue of This is Croydon Today. The winners included Penelope Boxall, Tamara Isted and Pamela Pope.

As the newspaper reported, the winners were pleased by the results of her first time at poetry:

Winner Penelope said: “I am absolutely delighted, as well as surprised as this is the first poem I have written.

“It was great fun to write something positive about Croydon. I may have to write some more now.”

Tamara has little time for inconsiderate people saying: “I do hate the way people drop gum on the streets. It gets all over my trainers.”

Without further ado or poetic desonctruction, here are last year’s three winning entries:

P E N E L O P E  B O X A L L

Finished gum ain’t your chum!

Sometimes, there’s bad press about Croydon

and this can be very depressing.

So let’s start with the small

though we think it nothing at all,

and make Croydon the best place to be in.

Sure, gum might be tiny and small

but it’s a real pain and mess for us all.

For when stuck on your shoes,

it’s a like a strong glue

and picks up all manner of things!

So when you have gum

and the flavour’s all gone,

and you want to get rid of it quick.

Wrap it to scrap it including the packet

and find it a home in a bin.

A bin is your friend, not your foe

as it tries to keep Croydon litter-low.

So in making our BID

we’ll save on our quids

and be the gum-free-est borough on show!

T A M A R A   I S T E D

On the pavement, on the roads,

on your trainers, on your clothes,

in the playground, in the park,

you don’t see it after dark.

Chewing gum is not a sin,

but put the goop in the bin.

Spitting it out is so not cool

so be good and follow the rule!

P A M E L A   P O P E

Spitting out chewing gum is a devilish sin,

PLEASE be an angel and put it in the bin.

For it clings to our shoes and sticks to the street

And often it’s found on a table or seat.

So come on you chewers, please have a heart,

And let’s keep our Croydon looking smart.

 
PHOTO:  Dumfries Civic Pride

Our friends (you can see some of them above) who make up the Dumfries Civic Pride group are, according to their website:

a group of Doonhamers who are proud of Dumfries, the historic town that gave rise to the names Bruce, Burns and Barrie.
We give up our spare time to make sure that you can be also be proud of your town.

We do this, in association with the Dumfries and Galloway Council, by promoting a well cared for environment, which provides businesses, tourists with the right message.

Our work includes:

…Clean-ups - Undertake litter and graffiti removal.

The latter goal that this group has set for itself has led to an audacious suggestion made earlier this week in the Dumfries and Galloway Standard, and that is to ban gum altogether from the UK, much as Singapore has done. As their frustrations increase in cleaning the town centre from discarded gum (yes, ’tis the season for AndrewsGumWorld stories on gum removal in the UK) has led them to write to their MPs to encourage them to take what the group sees as a necessary step.

In the article, group member Morris Service (a most excellent name for a group of this sort) explained the reasons behind their call for the criminalisation of the dropping of chewing gum to The Standard:

“The majority dispose of chewing gum responsibly but there were still those who left their discarded gum on the street, benches or on the back of seats on public transport.”He added: “While this seems a far reaching proposal, it comes with an increasing frustration at the impossible task of cleaning the sheer amount of chewing gum accumulating on our streets and pavements.

“Despite the efforts of Dumfries and Galloway Council employing contractors to remove chewing gum from parts of Dumfries town centre, at considerable expense, the problem has only been temporarily dealt with.”

The council has spent more than £1million on a major repaving project of Friars Vennel in Dumfries, which according to Mr Service is becoming littered with gum already.

In the same piece, a local MP, Russell Brown agreed with the challenges highlighted by the group, and called for local stores to carry biodegradable gum, recently introduced in England:

“I know gum stained pavements in Dumfries are a massive source of frustration for proud Doonhamers. But equally I know it is only the small minority who have no respect who throw their gum on the floor for someone else to come along and unknowingly tread it into the pavement.

“Last month an organic, biodegradable gum hit the shelves of supermarkets in the UK. So an alternative to banning gum – which could be difficult to enforce – could be to encourage local retailers to stock this natural substitute which does not stick to clothing or pavements.”

IMAGES: Chewing Gum Action Group

While our friends in the Chewing Gum Action Group in Britain are gearing up for the 2009 campaign, we thought we might include a couple of their gum wraps/posters from last year’s campaign that are part of the group’s most creative and ongoing efforts to address the challenges of discarded gum throughout the villages and on the streets of the UK (we’ve reported on their efforts elsewhere in this blog).

As their site notes, the group was established with the following goals:

The Chewing Gum Action Group (CGAG) is a joint initiative for local authorities aiming to change the behaviour of gum-droppers through local campaigns.

This website introduces CGAG and explains how we are making this behaviour change happen, as well as giving you the opportunity to get involved with the campaign.

You can see more of their campaigns and read about their worthy efforts, including some of their initial plans for the 2009 campaign by clicking here.

PHOTO: Trevor Ashby, Barnoldswick

Yesterday’s The Citizen, from Burnley, UK, reported that the Pendle Borough Council has spent 450.2 hours removing gum from streets in Nelson, Colne, Brierfield, Barnoldswick (you can see one of the bus shelters that been the object of cleaning efforts in Barnoldswick, part of a nice page of photos of the town by Trevor Ashby), Barrowford and Earby.

The article noted that a request through the Freedom of Information Act showed that the Council’s efforts since May 2006 have represented nearly three months of work to remove gum from the streets and town centres of the villages listed above.

John David, leader of the Borough Council, suggests that the effort is worth it, but also frustrating given the time, money and prevalence of available litter bins and the £75 [US$110] fine for disposing of gum on the streets:

Councillor John David, leader of Pendle Council, said: “We do have a problem with gum in Pendle and we take a lot of time and effort scraping it off our pavements.

“No-one wants to get gum on their shoes and it looks a mess on our pavements too.

“People need to remember that gum counts as litter.

“They risk having to pay a £75 fine for dropping it.

“What they need to do is use a litter bin – and we provide plenty of those.”

PHOTO: The Straits Times

While Jackie Chan’s recent comments on political control of the Chinese have gained him a certain level of notoriety (see this Opinion piece from the New York Times for an in-depth review of those comments), he also took on the gum chewing policies of Singapore in the same speech, as reported in The Straits Times this past weekend.

The newspaper noted that Chan suggested the following about gum and Singaporeans during the speech:

…he also lashed out at Singaporeans’ lack of social graces, The New Paper reported on Saturday. “Sometimes, I wonder why I can’t eat chewing gum in Singapore. Then, I think it’s actually right not to eat chewing gum,” he was reported as having said.

“If I let you eat chewing gum, those people will leave them on tables and chairs. They have no self-respect at all.”

PHOTO: Bubblegum Math, Oak Park District 97

WebMD reports this week that a recent research project headed by Dr. Craig Johnston, an instructor of pediatrics nutrition at Baylor College of Medicine found in the Wrigley’s funded study that chewing sugar-free gum brought statistically significant increases in standardized math scores and final math grades.

They presented the results of their study at a recent annual meeting at the American Society for Nutrition’s Scientific Sessions and Annual Meeting at Experimental Biology 2009.

Here’s who and what Dr. Johnston’s studied, and found out:

Johnston and his team enlisted 108 eighth-grade students in four math classes, randomly assigning them to two groups: one group chewed Wrigley’s sugar-free gum during school, while doing homework, and also while taking a standardized test; students in the control group didn’t chew gum.

Johnston tells WebMD that students who chewed gum showed an increase in standardized math test scores after 14 weeks of chomping in class and while doing homework, compared to those who didn’t chew.

Gum chewing was associated with a 3% increase in standardized math scores, which Johnston terms small but still “statistically significant.”

The youngsters who chewed also had final math grades that were “significantly better” than those who didn’t chew, Johnston says.

The WebMD piece also notes that other researchers not connected with the study tout chewing gum’s stress reducing properties, noting that “it’s likely that chewing gum can reduce stress, leading to enhanced concentration and thus better academic performance.”