Chiclets are a brand of candy coated chewing gum made by Cadbury Adams.The colors of the chiclets are: yellow, green, orange, red, white ,and pink. The product's name is derived from the Spanish word chicle (chewing gum) derived from (Nahuatl tziktli), the substance from which chewing gum was traditionally made. The original flavor was peppermint but many flavors have been added and discontinued over the decades since the introduction in 1906. Assorted fruit flavor is still available in Argentina, Egypt, Canada, Lebanon, Mexico and U.S.
In some countries, like Belgium, Brazil, Greece and Turkey, the term 'Chiclet', 'Chic' or 'Chicla' is often used to refer to any brand and/or type of chewing gum.
The gum is no longer widely available in the US, but it is the biggest gum brand in the Middle East, especially in Egypt where it has a huge market share. In South America, and Thailand, Chiclets is also produced, but the brand has been extended to include various formats like bubble gum and stick gum.
The Chiclet term has been co-opted in technology to describe
- a type of rubber keyboard,
- a small icon adjacent to a blog post, article or web page to indicate the availability of an RSS feed,
- the upper right hand corner button for configuring toolbars of some Aqua windows on Mac OS X
all of which resemble the square, pillow-shaped size, look, or feel of a Chiclet. In this context, the term is sometimes misspelled 'chicklet' by those ignorant of the reference (cf. the misspelling of the common user interface element known as a 'radio button' as 'radial button' by those unfamiliar with the old style of car radios which used push-buttons for station presets).
