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Today’s Prognosis on Bubble Tape

Paul Davidson

It is gum yet it is not tape.

How often are we faced with a product whose name has one legitimate word while the other word is pure blasphemy? It is a constant barrage of mixed messages if you ask me. Take for example:

Fruity Pebbles Pop Rocks Jalapeno Poppers Power Bar Cottage Cheese $100,000 Bar Bubble Tape

Bubble tape, indeed, can cause bubbles. In fact, if you chew and chew and chew you will find that there is no shortage of bubbles. Bubbles for all to take part in. But when you try and seal an envelope or hold two pieces of fabric together with this “so-called tape” you’re in for a rude awakening, buddy.

A rude awakening. (For dramatic sake purposes I have chosen to say this phrase twice. I hope it has worked.)

What it comes down to, more generally, is false advertising. The Froot Loops people were smart — they didn’t name their cereal Fruit Loops because there really is no fruit, but indeed those things are loops. So when you examine Froot Loops they have been very honest. It has loops and some foreign alien thing called a “Froot” that doesn’t exist. That’s fine, that works.

But Bubble Tape? I’m not quite sure what the people behind Bubble Tape are trying for here. Do they want children to laugh giddily with excitement at having their own chewable tape? Are children today so desparate to enter the world of offices and cubicles and business that they desire their own roll of tape? Tape that will assist them in securing notes to people’s cubicle walls? Tape that will seal up envelopes and hold numerous paperclips like a clothes-line for those scary moments when loose papers must be corraled?

The Bubble Tape phenom is something that does not bode well for its future. Due to the fact that dishonesty (on the part of the Bubble Tape Executives) breeds a lack of loyalty and when children finally realize that their tape sure does bubble but in no way handles jobs like straight-ahead normal masking tape, they’re in for a, yes that’s right, rude awakening (third time).

Why pick on Bubble Tape? Why sadden the Bubble Tape family (who probably are living the high life right now somewhere in middle America with their Bubble Tape funded mansion) with such criticism? What did Bubble Tape ever do to you, Pauly?

They lied.

You probably don’t know how it feels to have a very important letter returned to you in the mail because a long strip of Bubble Tape didn’t secure the envelope closed. And you probably don’t know how it feels to open that envelope and realize that the cash you enclosed for your Grandmother was missing all because the Bubble Tape didn’t keep the flap secure.

You probably don’t know.

Bubble Tape may have an immediate future. But in the long run – it is a product that will not outlast the more honest products like Froot Loops and Apples — two products who say what they mean and mean what they say.

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© 2023 by Paul Davidson
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