In 2005 I wrote a profile of an old friend, Tim Kehoe, a toy inventor who’d spent 10 years trying to solve what should be an easy problem: How do you make colored soap bubbles that don’t stain whatever they break on? If you’re thinking, “Oh that’s easy, just do X,” you’re wrong. Tim tried X. Didn’t work. In fact, it blew up the kitchen and permanently colored the dog.
But as of today, you can buy his colored bubbles, called Zubbles, at zubbles.com and through his iPhone app. And even if you’re not a bubble man, these things will blow your mind. Thanks to some seriously novel chemistry, the stain they appear to leave when they break vanishes in seconds. If only he could make pizza sauce do the same thing.
Here's a video of Mahoney and I blowing colored bubbles in the office. Read Tim’s account for the last four years of trying to bring his life’s work to market on the next page.
...The problem with working for a magazine about the future is that things don’t always—in fact, rarely—happen as you say they’re going to, and readers let you know...