Okay, hold on. Before we all ugly-cry in unison, let’s get our facts straight: the bubble wrap we know and love is about to lose its poppable quality, and we have Sealed Air Corp, its original makers, to thank for it.
There’s actually a very very good reason behind the change — two reasons, as a matter of fact.
The first one is Sealed Air realized that storing all the bubble wrap took up a lot of space, and shipping the humongous rolls to far-flung regions where potential clients would be was nigh-impossible. I mean, seriously, look at the size of these rolls:
They might be a toddler’s dream come true (and okay, we admit, a bit like our’s, too), but it’s a veritable shipping nightmare for the company.
The second reason is that because of the shipping difficulty, local imitators seized the opportunity to take over the bubble wrap market in these hard-to-reach places, making Sealed Air Corp. steadily lose its sales.
How exactly did Bubble wrap get so popular? Well, it was designed way back in the ’50s with the original intent of marketing it as texture wallpaper. Eventually, other shipping companies saw the benefits to be had of an inexpensive sheet of protective cushion plastic to keep fragiles and electronics in one piece, and the rest is history. (Though we wouldn’t mind having an entire wall of poppable bubble wrap to ourselves, mind you…)
So long story short, we’ve all actually been playing with a relic from the ’50s, and the company’s decided its high time it revamped its number one product. Makes perfect sense, actually.
The new design and rebrand is now iBubbleWrap, where the plastic sheets now feature huge, flat bubbles linked in chains instead of rows. The sheets will be sold to suppliers, shipping companies, and others as a flat piece of plastic, which need to be inflated with a pump that could cost up to $5,500. this also pretty much solves its storage and shipping problem, as the iBubbleWrap now just takes up 1/50th the size of its post-war era predecesor.
And yes, the redesign is still going to make it unpoppable. Yay for shippers, and for the rest of us… ?
Though truly, we will miss the fleeting zen of popping bubble wrap. Who knows? This new step just might make us find new ways to enjoy it.
Watch the report below:
You may also enjoy:
0 Comments