Walter Diemer accountant by trade, Diemer liked to experiment with gum recipes in his spare time. In doing so, he accidentally stumbled upon a unique recipe. The gum was pink because it was the only food coloring in the factory, which is the reason most bubble gum today is pink. Compared to standard chewing gum, the gum was less sticky, would not stick to the face, and yet stretched more easily. Diemer saw the possibilities, and using a salt water taffy wrapping machine, wrapped one hundred pieces of his creation to test market in a local mom-and-pop candy store. Priced at one
Pink and Say to be prisoners. The two prisoners of war receive vastly different treatment: Say is released from captivity some months later, while Pink was hanged within hours. At the end of the story, Polacco lets the reader know that Sheldon Curtis was her great-great-grandfather, and that the story of Pink and Say was an oral tradition in her family; she wrote the book to serve "as a written memory of Pinkus Aylee", Polacco's great-great-grandfathers hero. "Pink and Say" was well received by literary critics. Anita Silvey said in 2012 that she still cries every time she reads it. "In forty-eight pages