Here’s one of those weird purchases I made at a liquor shop called Mel & Rose that sells imported candies. There, within sight of the Hollywood sign, I bought Hollywood Chewing Gum: Chlorophylle. But it’s not a quaint local brand or even American. It’s made in France, by Cadbury (now owned by Kraft). It’s not even one of those original gum brands from the final days of the Victorian era.
Chewing gum first arrived in France in June 1944 along with the US troops during World War II, but it was not until 1952 when former GI Courtland Parfet returned to France that the first French chewing gum was launched. Named Hollywood, the green stick offered a soft mint taste called chlorophylle (spearmint).
The gum is simple and pleasant. It’s the classic style of stick, right down to a real foil wrapper on each piece. The flavor is spearmint and it’s quite mild but with a good enough punch to make me feel refreshed and clean without a sticky or artificial feeling. The package also boasts that it has chlorophyll in it, you know, that stuff that allows plants to photosynthesize. I remember it was popular in gum and mints in the seventies, but hadn’t seen it on a package in quite a long time.
I like that it was made with real sugar, so few stick gums are these days. So if you’re looking for something to remind you of the classic Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum, this is probably the closest you can find since Wrigley’s went to artificial sweeteners. The sugar isn’t terribly grainy, but the flavor and sweetness does go away pretty quickly, much quicker than Chiclets, but this is a more adult gum than Chiclets.
Related Candies
- Wee Glee Gum
- Choward’s Spearmint & Lemon
- Spearmint Leaves
- Classic Gums: Black Jack, Clove, Beemans & Teaberry
- XyliChew
- Mentos Xtrm: Mint & Spearmint
- Tiny Size Chiclets
I read from a book that Chlorophyll was a popular ingredient during the 50s (or maybe a newly emerging ingredient at that time), so they started using it for toothpaste, gums, candies, and other various personal care products. Maybe it was a popular ingredient introduced to the French first started making chewing gums, and “Hollywood” is a famous American icon along with “chewing gums” in the 1950s so maybe it was natural to combine the two. I also think it could have happened that it was the first product lasted over the time to be sort of their “classic”.
I believe the “Chlorophylle” is just French for spearmint. I was recently at a resort in Mexico that had a juice bar, and one the offerings was an unusually dark green juice with an unfamiliar name. All of the other juices had been labelled in Spanish, English, French and something else but this juice was only in Spanish, French and the last option. The French was “Chlorophylle” and it ended up being some kind of mint.
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