Saturday, June 14, 2008

Super Elastic Bubble Plastic (from Wham-O)


It was a tube gloop. Multicolored gloop.
According to the commercial, just put some on the end of a straw (provided) and you can blow beachball-sized balloons which "last and last!"
They didn't tell you it smelled like rubber cement spiked with insecticide. Or that any balloons you made would be runty lopsided blobs. If you were lucky you'd get something the size of a baseball. Rough it up and it'd deflate, shriveling into a scrap of gunk. The texture reminded me of peeled skin after a sunburn.

What was I doing wrong? Was it a skill I lacked? A special blowing technique?
Where were the big balloons from the commercial?

Now, decades later, I think I've figured it out. I should have been sniffing the fumes. Then maybe I'd see big floating blobs.
p.s.
thanks to Sally C. and Linda for inspiring this post.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gosh, maybe there's a company that will deliver packages of toys called "child of the 60s," etc.!! I saw something that reminded me of Tinker Toys the other day and got so excited.

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

You're on to something,stray g.
A time capsule you can play with.
Funny how a long forgotten toy or candy can take you back in time.

Sally said...

Darn, the youtube video was taken down before I got to see it. I'm guessing the chemical tube stuff you were getting was fancier, new and improved over what I was dabbing on the straw, because there was no multi color feature or beach ball size, but the smell you describe wasn't improved on at all.

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Sally,
Maybe you had the beta version of this stuff. Didn't you say it was green (as opposed to the color globs I had?) I think the only beach ball sized bubbles appeared in the commercials. A better name for it would have been "Super Stinky Bubble Dinkies."
The video seems to be working again, at least on my machine.