When Barry Chappell’s son was born, like a good parent, he felt it was time to quit smoking. For most people, that isn’t exactly easy, and Barry enlisted the help of Nicorette gum. On a long flight to Europe back in 2006, Barry was chewing his helper gum, but when he was through, he found he had nowhere to throw it away. He chose to roll it into a tiny ball. Nicorette gum being a cigarette craving suppressant, Barry felt the need to chew more than one piece, and continued to add the finished pieces into the rolled-up ball. By the end of the flight, he had the obviously brilliant idea to create the world’s largest ball of chewed gum. Most amusingly, it’s made entirely out of Nicorette gum.
The chewed gum ball started out as a joke between he and his daughter, but like many good jokes, became a serious project. The ball consists of 95,200 pieces of Nicorette gum — both displaying the dedication Barry had to his project, as well as just how tough it is for some people to get over smoking. As for the process to make the huge gumball? It involves sculpting. Click on the images to embiggen.
Ripley’s Believe It Or Not will be giving Barry Chappell an award for the World’s Largest Medicated Gumball, and it will even be aired on Art & Coin TV on January 26 at 8 PM, so head on over there to check out the details.
(Art & Coin TV via BuzzFeed)
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