First off, we were supposed to learn as little children that you don't eat gum at all. You chew it, and eventually spit it out. But is chewing a 30-year-old piece of gum any safer than eating it? Brian VanHooker collects vintage baseball cards, which often came in a pack of gum. Baseball cards originated as a premium for buying another product, say, cigarettes, or gum for the kids. Eventually, the cards became more prized than the gum, and finally in 1991, Topps removed the gum from its packs of cards. Hooker usually threw away the gum from vintage packs he bought, but occasionally thought of biting into one.
I don’t really know why. While I fondly recall Big League Chew and Bubble Tape as some of the few bright spots in my embarrassingly bad, miserable days in Little League, I have no such regard for the gum I’d find in trading card packs. While I always ate it, I remember it being hard and brittle and the flavor never lasted nearly as long as I’d hoped. It’s like that shitty Bazooka bubble gum, only not as good. But for some reason, as I open up these trading card packs as a 33-year-old man, I’m tempted.
But first, he decided to contact some food safety experts about the idea. Read what he found out at Mel magazine. -via Damn Interesting