Make Your Own Chewing Gum – Glee Gum Review

If your children are like mine, they like to make things, anything really. The Make your Own Chewing Gum Kit from Glee Gum was the perfect activity for Pie and I to do today since she had a day off from school. Glee Gum is an all natural product that still uses a chicle base for its gum, there are no preservatives, artificial colors, flavors or sweeteners and it is soy, dairy, nut, and gluten free! This is good old fashioned chewing gum made the way some of our grandparents might remember (chicle was pretty much replaced by synthetic gum base by the 1940’s)!

Pie and I got down to business after we read through the included directions, and the included history of chicle and the rainforest.  Everything we needed to make our gum was included in the attractively packaged kit! There was a bag of chicle pellets, confectioner’s sugar, corn syrup, cinnamon and cherry flavoring powder and a plastic pan to melt the chicle in. After melting the chicle pellets in the microwave (it took us about 2 minutes of 30 second increments to get ours melted), we stirred in the warmed corn syrup. THAT made Pie giggle because it looked weird and mom had a time stirring “the goop”, lol! It is very sticky stuff! I did get some on my fingers but it hardened up and came right off with soap and warm water.

After we had gotten the chicle and corn syrup as mixed as we could, it was plopped onto the pile of patiently waiting confectioner’s (powdered!) sugar. Now this is where the fun starts! I was prepared for mess by placing a marble pastry slab onto a kitchen towel to prevent slipping, and catch spills. Pie had a blast smooshing, kneading, pulling, punching, rolling and playing with her blob of soon to be chewing gum. It wasn’t sticky at all since you use plenty of powdered sugar on the kneading surface.

The directions didn’t mention how long we were supposed to knead our gum so we probably spent about 10 minutes with it until it was smooth and well kneaded. We then cut our blob in half and added the included flavors to each half. Pie said the cherry smelled “SO good! she could eat it!” I did think it was nice, so was the cinnamon. I do have to say that rolling our blob out was a bit of a challenge at first, I eventually took over and was able to roll it out to about pie dough thickness. It is a very stiff dough? so you may need to help younger children with the rolling. We found that a pizza cutter worked best for Pie to cut the gum into stick (ish!) size pieces. The kit says you will get about 50 chewing gum sized pieces and I found this to be accurate.

After 40 minutes (we drew it out) of heating, mixing, kneading, rolling and cutting we had a final product! While we don’t think the initial flavor lasts as long as our regular chewing gum we did love the burst of flavor in the beginning. The chicle gum has a nice texture and it stays soft for a long time for ultimate chew-ability! Wouldn’t this be a fun gift for budding scientists or those just curious about how things are made? We give it a big thumbs up!

You can keep updated on Glee Gum news via their Facebook, Twitter and The Glee Glum Blog. Tell them I said Hi!

Glee Gum Promos! you can print a BOGO Glee Gum coupon! they make a great stocking stuffer!

Win It! Thanks to Glee Gum one lucky reader is going to win a Make Your Own Kit of their choice! You’ll be able to choose ONE of these kits:

• Make  Your Own Chewing Gum Kit
• Make Your Own Gummy Candy Kit
• Make Your Own Chocolate Kit

How to Enter: (mandatory) Visit the Glee Gum store locator then come back here and leave me a comment telling how far you have to go to find Glee Gum! {miles is fine, you don’t need to leave the address :) }

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Rules: Follow the directions above! Giveaway open to U.S. residents, 18+ only and ends December 1st, 11:59 est. Winner must reply to email within 48 hours or I will redraw.