I saw a pop-up ad for Jack-in-the-Box this morning while playing an online word puzzle (Quordle, if that helps). As some of JitB’s breakfast offerings flashed on the screen, a rubric was displayed, reading “Chew on our Breakfasts, Not on the Gum Wall”
WTF? What the hell is a Gum Wall?
(Mods, feel free to move if this is more about ad copy than facts.)
I’d assume it means the wall where kids would stick their chewed gum.
Though as a slogan it doesn’t make much sense.
I take it to mean a wall that everyone sticks their used chewing gum to. There was an underpass on campus when I was in college that was like that, a whole wall completely covered with used gum.
…And ninja’ed. And I agree that the slogan makes no sense. Why would anyone chew on the gum wall? That’s gross!
So an easy choice and you will now eat at Jack in the Box, right?
One of the more disgusting tourist attractions in my town is Bubble Gum Alley. There is a similar “attraction” in Seattle.
Nope. Tried that, and all their sandwiches had no fillings.
Those folks are just WAAAAYY too fond of the excluded middle.
The special that wrapped up The Big Bang Theory had a reference to that, although I don’t remember if anyone said “gum wall.” It’s titled “Unraveling the Mystery: A Big Bang Farewell” and features Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco, who show the sets and give us some insight on the filming of the series. When they show us the elevator, one of them mentions that, if the actors were chewing gum, they’d stick it on a wall or something somewhere down the stairs before they’d shoot their scenes.
It’s a wall. Covered with gum.
I was going to say, “Who doesn’t know what the Gum Wall is?” Then I realized, duh, not everyone lives in the Seattle area. 
I live in Portland, in fact. Although, I haven’t actually seen any gum walls, I do grasp the concept. Where I’m struggling is in trying to parse that Jack-in-the-Box ad.
Without having seen the ad, my WAG is that Jack’s commercials have been targeting the 18-30 male stoner market for quite some time now, and chewing someone else’s abandoned gum is something you might do if you’re hungry and extremely high.
Ew. Something I haven’t done since I was four (chewing abandoned gum, that is. I wasn’t getting baked when I was four)
.
The Gum Wall is like some people I have known.
They are beautiful from far away, but extremely disgusting up-close.
FWIW, my nephew thought the gum wall was awesome when my sister took him there last summer.
Of course, my nephew is 9, so YMMV.
The Maid-Rite Sandwich Shoppe in Greenville, Ohio, has had one for decades.