Sometimes, you just need a day like today as a break from it all. What better way to do it than annoying everyone around you by popping some bubble wrap?
50 years ago today, a couple of easily excitable engineers going by the name of Marc Chavannes and Al Fielding were busy inventing themselves a new kind of wallpaper with a paper back and plastic front. I mean, wow, who wouldn’t want that? Well, turns out a few people. It didn’t really… take off.
What did take off, however, was the plane they were on when they looked out the window and saw the clouds. “Huh,” I guess one of them thought, “You see those clouds? They’re doing a pretty good, fluffy, bubbly job of keeping us up here” and, as planes typically do, they went into turbulence and noticed the cushioning feeling of the air as they bobbled around in their old school propeller plane (probably saying ‘what what?’ and stroking their curly moustaches).
So it was around this time in 1960 these two engineers set up the most originally-named business I’ve heard of – the Sealed Air Corporation. It’s become one of those brand names we just use to describe stuff now. It’s up there in the big leagues with the Coke and the Hoover and the Sellota-… sorry, Blue Peter, double-sided sticky tape…
So what do we have to thank bubble wrap for over the past 50 years, besides making calendars or bikinis out of the stuff? Well it aids stress relief and boredom, according to research carried out by a Professor Dillon at Western New England College across the pond. It’s to do with the action of actually popping the bubble and hearing it pop which calms and entertains people. It was once thought it was the sound, which is what was thought to bring Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day to the forefront of everyone’s mind.
The day was first coined by a couple of DJs in Bloomington, Indianapolis. They celebrated by popping bubble wrap live on air, and it captivated the audience. Everyone had to find some and pop some. Office workers were fighting in the stationary cupboard, kids were ignoring their gift their Auntie had sent them, the cats were nomming on it. This was perhaps the best day ever.
So thank you, Sealed Air Corporation, for making enough bubble wrap to stretch to the moon and back each year and earning your place in ‘pop’ culture. Ahah. See what I did there?
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