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Chewing gum has been around for hundreds of years in the form of chicle, a resin extracted from the sapodilla tree. In the 1840s, John B. Curtis began to sell his Maine Pure Spruce Gum. The natural spruce taste proved popular and he soon began making the gum with paraffin wax and flavoring it with ingredients like sugar, licorice, and vanilla. Chicago soap sales, William Wrigley Jr., launched Juicy Fruit and Wrigley's Spearmint in 1893. By 1920, the average American chewed 105 sticks of gum a year. In 1928, the Frank H. Fleer company sought to create a gum that could be blown into bubbles. The company found success with their formula for Dubble Bubble gum. Shortly after World War II, Thomas Douglas and Russell Weiner developed Super Bubble gum. The pair based it on the recipe for an older brand known as Bub's Daddy. For just a few pennies, people purchased original, apple, grape, and watermelon flavored Super Gum. Sugarless gum hit the market in the 1950s. Americans now consume more than 2.5 billion dollars worth of gum per year.