McAllen’s Bubble Gum King

Andy Paris was walking down the street in McAllen one day in 1946 when he encountered a group of boys scuffling over something in the street—a piece of bubble gum, of all things. It occurred to him that because of World War II and its immediate aftermath, these kids hadn’t had a piece of bubble gum for a very long time. Maybe ever. It got him to thinking. 

Sweets were in short supply in the 1940s but bubble gum was especially scarce. Bubble gum requires latex, which was harder to come by than sugar. This was a time, too, when latex was still made with goo from rubber trees. Synthetic latex had yet to be invented. 

Paris was already in the gum business, importing chewing gum from Matamoros and he knew people in Monterey who gave him latex for free. That gave him an idea.

First, he visited his latex contacts. Two days later he had the latex market for the entire western hemisphere cornered. Then he convinced the gum manufacturers he’d been working with to switch from chewing gum to bubble gum and took control of that market as well. He sold his gum for a penny apiece and flooded the market. Practically overnight, Andy Paris made millions of kids happy and millions of dollars for himself. 

This marked a clear reversal of fortune for the 27-year-old son of Greek immigrants who had somehow become fluent in Spanish while growing up in Detroit, Michigan. When America entered World War II he used his trilingual skills (he also spoke fluent Greek and English) in Mexico, buying sweets for his parents small tobacconist shop. The Mexican gum and mint candy he sent home saved the family business. 

The climate and the people of South Texas and Mexico suited Paris just fine, so he moved to McAllen in 1946 and opened Andrew J. Paris Import Sales in a small office on Main Street. He contracted with chewing gum manufacturers in Matamoros and sold Wrigley’s knockoffs in the states. And then he saw those kids fighting over a piece of gum and became rich and famous.  

In 1947, he opened the Paris Bubble Gum factory in McAllen at a cost of $500,000. He spent another $100,000 on advertising and became one of the most famous and most photographed people in America. Life magazine dubbed him “The Bubble Gum King.” He was on the Art Linkletter and Perry Como radio shows and appeared in newsreels. 

Hollywood recruited him to teach a 10-year-old Natalie Wood how to blow bubbles for her famous scene with Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street. He dated Marilyn Monroe. He was everywhere all the time, forever blowing bubbles. But the bubble burst almost as quickly as it had formed. 

The bubble gum business, the way Paris conducted it, was a risky venture. His Mexican manufacturers demanded cash, which required him to drive deep into Mexico every so often with an armed guard and a suitcase stuffed with money.

Andy’s son, John A. Paris, produced and co-directed Andy Paris: Bubble Gum King, a 2010 documentary that chronicles his father’s life and times. In an interview with Texas Monthly in 2015 he talked about the peculiar nature of his father’s business: “He would go down into Mexico with a pistolero at his side and a quarter of a mil in suitcases at a time, to pay for the latex, to pay the workers down in Mexico. Being a cash business, his receipts were cash, so that generated some interest from the IRS.”

The IRS neither understood nor trusted Paris’ business model and disallowed every penny of his reported cash expenses. The feds also wanted to know more about the 13 gum factories he worked with in Mexico. And then the latex market opened up again, allowing Wrigley’s and Bazooka to enter the market Paris had controlled for eight years.

Paris tried hawking other products, like licorice gum, but nothing worked. He sold the factory in 1955, entered the vending machine business and made annual payments to the IRS until 1971. He married his former secretary, Mary Patricia, in 1956. The couple remained active in the civic and business affairs of McAllen and the Rio Grande Valley for the better part of the next half century. 

The rest of America forgot about him and his bubble gum empire about ten seconds after his factory closed, but not McAllen. The city has designated the site of his factory and headquarters as a historical landmark and erected a marker there.  In McAllen, Andy Paris is still Bubble Gum King.