The Brand Origins of Tarzan Bubble Gum: The Candy Factory Conan O’Brien Saved

I watched the Philippines episode of Conan O’Brien Must Go the way I watch anything Conan does, which is immediately. I have been a fan for years. I was mostly there for the jeepneys and the balut. Then he walked into a candy factory in Manila, held up a pack of Tarzan bubble gum, and I sat up.

Tarzan. I had not thought about that gum in years. I remember the wrapper. I remember it being harder to chew than gum has any business being, and I remember the flavor that I could never quite name as a kid. What I did not remember, because I genuinely assumed otherwise, is that the company is still around. Somewhere along the way I filed Tarzan under things that quietly disappeared. Turns out it never left. It has been running since 1949.

So I went digging, and the story is better than the billboard. A man asked a talk show host for free advertising, and got it. Here is who actually makes Tarzan, what else they make, how old the company really is, and my honest read on whether any of this saves them. Sources are linked inline.

Who Makes Tarzan Bubble Gum?

The company is Philip Sweets Manufacturing

Tarzan is made by Philip Sweets Manufacturing Co., Inc., which shortens itself to PHISMAN and brands its candy as Philip’s. The company dates itself to 1949 and is still family run. Its original plant was on Isabel Avenue, since renamed Gov. W. Pascual Street, in Northern Hills, Malabon (Isa Munang Patalastas). Business directories still list the company on Gov. W. Pascual Avenue, and its Facebook page now shows a Quezon City base.

There is no corporate website, no press office, no investor deck. There is a Facebook page, an Instagram account, and a Yahoo email address. That detail matters later.

Texas came first, Tarzan came second

The company’s first real hit was not Tarzan. It was Texas, a pink square of bubble gum wrapped in waxed paper, sold to schoolkids through the 1960s. It cost one centavo a piece, and five centavos bought six of them. Tarzan followed in 1965 (Isa Munang Patalastas).

Both names were borrowed from American pop culture, which was the marketing logic of the era. Texas was named after the state. Tarzan was named after the jungle character, which gave a one-centavo chew a bit of adventure. In sari-sari stores, Tarzan became the local answer to Bazooka. Bazooka had comic strips in the wrapper. Tarzan had colored wrappers and a cola flavor with a hint of cinnamon, and a texture tough enough that blowing an actual bubble took commitment.

Then it went quiet

Both brands faded for years. In the 2010s the company brought Texas back with updated packaging, and Tarzan returned to shelves alongside it. That relaunch found baby boomers and older millennials, the people who remembered the taste. I was apparently supposed to be one of them, and I missed it entirely, which tells you something about how loud the relaunch was.

Which is exactly the problem. When Charles de Guia, the mechanical engineer who works at the family factory, described the business on Conan’s podcast, he said the customer base was mostly people aged 50 to 60 (PhilSTAR Life). A nostalgia brand whose buyers are aging out is a brand with a clock on it.

He also described what the factory used to be, in the sentence that makes the whole story land: “sobrang lakas daw nung candy factory, like 24/7 tumatakbo and may daily deliveries. Right now, hindi na siya ganon” (GMA News).

How Conan O’Brien Ended Up on an EDSA Billboard

He applied to a podcast in May 2024

Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend has a recurring segment where a listener gets a call with Conan. Charles de Guia applied in May 2024. His stated reason was not to meet a celebrity. It was, in his words, that “we could use a bit of advertising, parang marketing exposure” (GMA News).

Six months later he got the call. The episode went out on November 21, 2024, titled “Charles and the Chocolate Factory”, described on Team Coco’s own site as Conan talking to Charles in Manila about working as a mechanical engineer in an unpopular candy factory. Conan said on air that he wanted to turn things around and make it the biggest candy company in the Philippines (PhilSTAR Life).

Talk show hosts say things like that every week. This one meant it.

The crew called back in July 2025

Conan’s team reached out about filming. On October 15, 2025, Conan and the crew arrived at the factory, about an hour late because of traffic, which is the most Manila detail in the entire story. He drew a doodle at Charles’s desk and signed it, signed a Conan Funko Pop, and left a mug with a note (GMA News; GMA Entertainment).

Then came the actual payoff. A billboard went up at EDSA-Guadalupe showing Conan in a cowboy hat, a leopard print loincloth and photoshopped abs, swinging on a vine, holding packs of Tarzan and Texas. The tagline: “ME LOVE GUM, PARDNER.” It was up in October 2025 (The Chronicle PH).

Conan’s own summary on Instagram: “Visited my fan Charles’ candy factory and lost my f-ing mind.” Charles posted back: “Still chewing on how surreal today was. Love you, Conan!” (GMA Entertainment).

It aired almost a year later

The factory visit became part of “The Philippines,” the fourth and final episode of season 3 of Conan O’Brien Must Go, which aired on HBO and HBO Max on September 11, 2026, September 12 in Philippine time (Wikipedia; Rolling Stone Philippines). The rest of the episode has him playing a medallion-stealing villain on the police drama Sanggang-Dikit FR, touring Intramuros on a bamboo bicycle, getting fitted for a barong, working the front desk at a hotel in Tanauan, eating balut, and shopping for an island.

What Else Does Philip Sweets Make?

Fewer things than you would guess. This is not a company with fifty SKUs. The full lineup on Philippine grocery shelves is bubble gum and caramel, and that is basically it.

Prices above are shelf prices listed by Sta. Lucia Grocers and will vary by store. The caramels ran through sari-sari stores and school canteens from the 1960s into the 1990s, in classic and coffee, before the fruit version was added.

So the answer to “what else do they make” is: two gums and three caramels. Six products, if you count Tarzan Original and Cool Mint separately. A company that has survived 77 years on roughly six things.

Can a Billboard Actually Save It?

Here is where I stop reporting and start guessing, so treat this part as opinion.

What Conan gave Philip Sweets is genuinely valuable and genuinely incomplete. Awareness is the top of a funnel. It is the part most small manufacturers cannot buy. A billboard on EDSA-Guadalupe plus a season finale on HBO Max plus a week of Philippine news coverage is more attention than this company has had since the 1970s, and it cost them nothing.

But attention converts into revenue through distribution, and distribution is the part nobody films. If a 28-year-old sees the billboard, remembers the gum from their lolo’s store, and then cannot find it at the nearest convenience store, the attention evaporates. Tarzan is stocked in major supermarkets and on Shopee and Lazada, which is real, but it is not the same as being in the impulse-buy position at the counter where gum is actually sold.

The second gap is that the brand’s own channels are thin. A Facebook page and an Instagram account with a Yahoo contact address is not a place to send a spike of national curiosity. The moment when everyone is searching for you is the moment you need somewhere for them to land.

None of which takes away from the thing that actually happened here. A guy in Malabon looked at a business that used to run 24/7 and decided the bottleneck was that nobody knew about it anymore. Then he did the only cheap thing available to him, which was to ask. That instinct is worth more than the billboard.

And it worked on me, and I have never once driven past that billboard. I watched an episode, remembered a wrapper, and went and read everything I could find about a candy company I assumed was dead. That is the whole job of the top of a funnel. The part that is still on them is what happens when the next person who remembers Tarzan goes looking for it and has nowhere good to land.

Where to Buy Tarzan Bubble Gum

Major Philippine supermarkets carry it, and the company itself has said on Facebook that Tarzan is “available in most major supermarkets.” Online, both Tarzan and Texas are listed on Shopee and Lazada, usually in 105g and 265g packs. For wholesale or bulk, the company lists a landline and the email philipsweets@yahoo.com in business directories.

Sources

• Isa Munang Patalastas, “Bubble Gum of the ‘60s: TEXAS of Philip Sweets Mfg. Co.”, August 2020, for the 1949 founding, the Malabon address, the one-centavo price and the 1965 Tarzan launch
• Team Coco, “Charles and the Chocolate Factory”, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, November 21, 2024
• GMA News, “This guy might have the best Conan O’Brien-in-Manila story yet”
• GMA Entertainment, “Conan O’Brien stars in billboard ad of struggling local candy business”, October 2025
• PhilSTAR Life, “Conan O’Brien models, fulfills wish of Filipino fan”
• The Chronicle PH, “Conan O’Brien turns sweet tooth into sweet gesture”
• Rolling Stone Philippines, Philippines episode recap, and Wikipedia for the season 3 air dates
• Sta. Lucia Grocers for the current product list and shelf prices
• Philip Sweets Manufacturing Co., Inc. on Facebook and Instagram