Fab or flub?: Will Juggle Bubbles burst our tester’s nostalgia bubble?
With spring break right around the corner, I’ve noticed the toy aisles at Target filling up with kites, sand buckets, sidewalk chalk and (one of my all-time favorite things) bubbles.
If you ever spent a spring day outside as a child, chances are you might have spent some of that time blowing bubbles. I’ve always had a fondness for bubbles — one that has continued long after I outgrew the playground and recess. This is largely due to my opinion that anything that can get kids outside and provide them with countless hours of fun (all while not requiring any sort of technology) deserves appreciation.
For this week’s Fab or Flub?, I decided to review an As Seen On TV product called Juggle Bubbles. This kid-friendly item, $10 at Target, claims to produce bubbles you can pass, catch and juggle without worry that they’ll burst. Sounds like fun, right? I thought so, too.
Back in the day, I actually played a game in which a friend and I would blow bubbles and try to catch them on the tips of our fingers without having them pop. We were hardly successful, but it was still a fun and cheap way to kill some time.
First impression
From the Juggles Bubbles box, I pulled out a pair of knit gloves, a 4-ounce bottle of no-pop bubble solution, a bubble blower, a round, plastic tray and the instructions.
Looking at the items, the $10 price tag immediately struck me as being a little steep. I already had a pair of knit gloves I could have used, and last weekend I saw Target had bottles of bubbles for $1. I reminded myself, though, that this was no ordinary bubble solution. This solution doesn’t pop (or so it says), which was clearly worth the cost if it worked.
Juggle Bubbles seemed pretty simple to use. Users start by sliding on the gloves, then pouring the bubble solution into the round tray that is provided. You are then told to dip the wide end of the blower into the tray of solution, take it out and blow a bubble.
After allowing the bubble to sit at the end of the blower for a couple of seconds, you flick the blower upward to release it and — voila! You should now be able to begin bouncing the bubble back and forth using the gloves.
Fab or flub?
Flub. On my first couple attempts with the product, I found it incredibly hard to blow a bubble that didn’t pop.
Eventually, I was able to get a bubble fully formed, though it certainly wasn’t as big as the bubbles advertised on the product’s packaging.
After blowing my bubble, I flicked it into the air and caught it safely with my gloved hand. After bouncing it twice in my hand, the bubble burst. Things were certainly not getting off to a good start.
Things never really got any better. At one point, I tried to get my brother in on the action to see if he might have more luck. While he did catch on to blowing the bubbles faster than I did, they still popped when he tried to flick them off the bubble blower.
When he did get a bubble that didn’t pop, we tried bouncing it back and forth between us to see how long we could go without popping it. The longest streak we achieved was about 30 seconds, a major disappointment for a toy that promised hours of fun.
In the end, I decided to just stick to my $1 bubbles.
This story was originally published February 20, 2015 at 2:48 PM with the headline "Fab or flub?: Will Juggle Bubbles burst our tester’s nostalgia bubble?."