Gummed up?

Writer Elbert Hubbard grumbled more than a century ago that the United States would never be a civilized country until it spent more on books than chewing gum.

One can only wonder what Hubbard would have made of the reading material that adorned the most iconic symbol of chewing gum, Chicago’s Wrigley Building, in fall 2007. A 10-story-tall banner featured packs of three of the William Wrigley Jr. Company’s most popular sugarfree gums—Orbit, Eclipse, and Extra—tucked into a dentist’s white laboratory coat. Copy proclaimed that the trio were the “first and only” chewing gums to receive the American Dental Association (ADA) seal of approval. The patch on the jacket pocket read “ADA Accepted.”