#840 Popping Bubble Wrap

Get your thumbs ready

Okay, trivia time.

What were the two inventors of Bubble Wrap trying to make instead of packaging material back in 1957 at the Sealed Air Corporation? Take a guess and let’s see what you got (answer below).

For the patient folks, let’s chat for a moment about the different ways to do the deed:

1. Olde Time Classic. Your average pop. Just squeezing it in your hands with a satisfied smile on your face. Nothing flashy here, folks. Just a thumb, some fingers, and lots of satisfying pops.

2. The Big Bang. A trickier move, this one requires delicately wrapping the unpopped bubble wrap into a tight ball or Bubble Cube, and then, in one quick move, just hugging the whole thing against your body really hard. Try to do this before 10pm so you don’t wake the neighbors.

Can't you hear the Aerosmith?

3. Walk This Way. You’ll need a large piece of bubble wrap for this one, likely from a new TV or fridge that got delivered to your house. Just pull the wrap out, lay it down on the floor, take off your socks, and … just walk all over it. Walk back and forth, walk in circles, just don’t stop walking, don’t stop popping. When the pops slow down you may have to inspect it closely for any leftover bubbles. I say jump on those ones.

4. The Virtual Pop. Crank up the sound and get your pop on, people.

5. The Twister. Just hold it in front of you, roll it up like a carpet, and twist your hands in different directions really hard. When you’re done, you’ll have a nice flat well-popped piece in the center of your wrap, and you’ll have to move on to a new section.

6. Mini-Pops. Sometimes you expect to pull out a big, fat mess of bubble wrap and out comes a thin, little sheet of mini-bubbles instead. But sometimes that’s all you get, man. So do a few mini-pops and enjoy it.

My friends, loudly popping bubble wrap is a great joy in life. It’s a satisfying stress relief, a fun surprise, and a rare little moment to act like a kid during a boring day at the office or while unpacking after a hectic move.

So, aren’t you glad they made Bubble Wrap into packing material and not textured wallpaper instead?

AWESOME!

popping

Photos from: here and here

82 thoughts to “#840 Popping Bubble Wrap”

  1. Got to love bubble wrap…..off to go and find some hehe
    pop pop pop pop
    Also the twisting of the bubble wrap is cool

  2. Dear God, I LOVE bubble wrap, especially popping them. It’s one of the few ways that I can successfully relieve stress.

    What is Bubble Wrap shipped in? Curiously enough, it’s styrofoam, which is shipped in a layer of bubble wrap.

  3. Such a good stress reliever. I think people should take up popping bubble wrap to calm the nerves instead of smoking or drinking. We’d all be a lot healthier that way.

    Of course, I have not been able to pop bubble wrap for the last 15 years without imagining myself as Ace Ventura in a tutu. Good times.

  4. A fun one at work is to lay out the buble wrap on the floor of my cube and then roll around on it with my office chair. Yeah, my coworkers love me…

  5. A fun one at work is to lay out the bubble wrap on the floor of my cube and then roll around on it with my office chair. Yeah, my coworkers love me…

  6. This one never fails at our office—my co-workers and I love to pop bubble wrap by walking on it, standing on it while pretending to have serious conversations, snapping it deliberately, etc. The familiar sound is guaranteed to bring a people out of their cubbies.

  7. Ha, I would still have bubble wrap textured wallpaper. Bouncing off of the walls would be fun until there were no bubbles left to be popped!

  8. A more diabolical scheme is to take bubble wrap, preferably the big air packs that come in some shipping boxes, and put them underneath car tires. Gets people EVERY time. And it’s pretty funny to watch their reaction.

    1. One time I laid a sheet on the floor and rolled over it with my chair. The cat was sleeping nearby at the time. It jumped almost three feet in the air as it woke up – sorry cat, but you kept us laughing for hours.

      Oddly, the cat kept away from us for quite a while after that.

      1. The mental picture of this just had me laughing so hard I was crying. Thanks for that, laughs like that are priceless :-)

  9. This is definitely one of my all-time favorite things to do. My g/f gets me bubble wrap on my birthdays and christmas.

    Apparently my cat is also quite fond of the stuff. I guess it’s proof she’s my cat.

  10. Okay, this is what you should do:
    get a nice big roll and roll lay it out in a hallway or some place long.
    put some socks and slippery pants like pjs on.
    get a head start and run towards the bubbles.
    slip and slide down the the bubbles.

    me and my childhood neighbor used to do this over 20 years ago.

    AWESOME!!!

  11. ahh this is such a stress relieving mechanism…and if you ever run out of it, you can even do it on the internet now! Good times people..

  12. HUGE Fan, but I get so disappointed when it’s the invincible bubble wrap….you know? the super reinforced once that are almost impossible to pop…no good….no good at all!

  13. I learned on the news that bubble wrap is a fantastic insulator because of the trapped air. So, if you’re cold and have nothing else besides bubble wrap, DO NOT POP IT but wrap yourself in it.

    1. hope you’re still smiling as big as you were in those dancing pictures with the red blanket.

      AWESOME!

  14. Twice in the last year I have had the best thing ever happen to me. I have been driving down the road, and come across a large sheet of bubble wrap in my lane. Nothing my friends is as satisfying as driving over bubble wrap, nothing.

  15. This should have been in the top 10 at least.
    Nothing is more awesomer than bubble wrap.
    Hell, I even have a bubble wrap game on my iPod Touch!

  16. There’s a new kind of bubble wrap that can’t be popped because all the bubbles are interconnected. I work at a pottery shop and our bisque sometimes arrives packed in it. I HATE IT! I want the proper bubble wrap! >:(

  17. I just checked on this web site for the first time and I had to check if this one is listed. Personally I think that the best thrill is popping the last one and havinf the satisfaction knowing that you got them all. Personally I rate this one high on the cool fun things to do list as it’s really cheap.

  18. LOVE THIS! I’ve even had people had work bring me bubble wrap so I can wheel my chair over it, and POP POP POP to my heart’s content. I am such an uber geek and glad to see I’m not the only one ;)

  19. sadly i knew the answer to the bubble wrap wallpaper trivia question as I used to work for sealed air… I got a bit excited when I realized i knew the answer to that question

  20. can you buy it? my dollar tree has small wrappingpaper sized oned that take only a few mins.

  21. My dad once brought home TONS of the big bubble bubble wrap. We lined it up in two rows behind the tires of our car in the driveway. We had neighbors popping out of doors in seconds. I think that most of them hadn’t moved that fast in years!

  22. TRY THIS ONE. CAREFULLY CUT ONE SINGLE BUBBLE FROM THE ROLL. THEN HOLD IT HIDDEN BETWEEN THUMB AND 2ND DIGIT. WALK UP TO YOUR FRIENDS AND PRETEND YOUR CRACKING YOUR NECK. IF YOU TIME IT RIGHT YOUR SURE TO GET PEOPLE FREAKING OUT. HINT USE THE HAND THAT IS HOLDING THE SINGLE BUBBLE TO PUSH AGAINST YOUR HEAD, KNEE, ELBOW OR JAW.

  23. There’s always the great fun where you take your friend or co-worker behind a door and loudly offer to crack his or her back and then do the bubble wrap twist while the other person loudly moans and “oh-ahs” about how great that felt.

  24. I love bubble wrap!! Way cheaper than therapy. I had the best bubble popping experience the other day… I drove over a huge sheet with my car!!! It was awesome!!!

  25. Because of rennovations going on at my school, we’ve had to pack everything up into these insanely huge rolls of bubble wrap. I’m talking three feet high and 100+ feet long with huge half dollar sized bubbles on them. Needless to say, all us highschoolers has many a field day popping the huge roll as we passed by it in the hall. It even got so bad that they made a rule that anyone caught popping the bubble wrap would be punished.

    We still pop it though. :D

  26. I love bubblewrap!!!

    I even had a large piece of bublewrap, which I saved for months, and on my most stressful days I’d pull it out and pop a few – sweet joy!

    The only downside was that it irritated my Mom! LOL!

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