Claim: Coca-Cola used to send a salesman out to purchase a piece of Coca-Cola chewing gum once a year to protect its trademark on the product.
Status: False.
Origins: The
Coca-Cola Company has for many years been almost fanatical in protecting its name and logo, two of the most valuable trademarks in the world. This was not always the case, however — in the early days, Coca-Cola allowed the use of its name and logo with a variety of non-soda items produced by outside manufacturers, such as candy and cigars. One such product was Coca-Cola chewing gum, a product that enjoyed some success in the early part of the 20th century. Eventually, though, Coca-Cola became more reticent about allowing the use of its trademarks with anything other than official company-sponsored products, especially when those products were of such low quality that they might reflect badly on Coca-Cola itself. Such was the case with Coca-Cola chewing gum, which by 1924 had so deteriorated in quality as to be an embarrassment to the company. Coca-Cola sought to remedy the situation by purchasing the nearly bankrupt chewing gum maker through an intermediary and quietly retiring the product. This purchase led to the creation of another classic piece of Cokelore.
Rumor had it that Coca-Cola still had to go through the motions of producing and marketing Coca-Cola chewing gum in order to "protect" the trademark; if they didn't and let the unused name lay fallow, someone else could snap it up and begin producing a Coca-Cola chewing gum over which the company would have no control. (This isn't true from a legal standpoint, of course, but we're talking rumor here, not reality.) Accordingly, Coca-Cola supposedly complied with this regulation by sending a salesman out once a year to deliver a carton of gum to a small store in rural South Carolina. The salesman would drop off the gum, leave the store, walk around the block, re-enter the store, buy a piece of gum, chew it, then buy back the rest of the carton and leave. Having technically satisfied the requirement that they actually sell Coca-Cola chewing gum, Coca-Cola could rest assured that their "Coca-Cola chewing gum" trademark was protected for another year.
Last updated: 24 March 2000
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