What was the first commercial product ever sold using a barcode scanner?
Marlboro Cigarettes
Wrigley’s Gum
Campbell’s Tomato Soup
Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes
The very first scanning of the now ubiquitous Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode was on a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum. This groundbreaking moment occurred in June 1974 at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The pack of gum wasn’t specially designated to be the first scanned product. It just happened to be the first item lifted from the cart by shopper Clyde Dawson. The simple act of scanning a barcode on a pack of Wrigley’s gum initiated a paradigm shift in how products were tracked, sold, and restocked, laying the foundation for the modern retail landscape we know today.
The correct answer is Wrigley’s Gum.