Finally.
You can sit quietly in the privacy of your own cubicle and pop the bubbles in limitless quantities of Bubble Wrap for free, forever.
It doesn't get much better than this.
Not too much upside from here.
The site was created by Katherine Fernie, a Centreville, Virginia web designer, "back in the day when the funniest things on the Internet were sites like 'the big red button' that doesn't do anything."
Enough of the small talk: start popping.
There's also an "insane" version if you're really bored.
And what website would be complete without a store?
All manner of things Bubble Wrap.
[via Lisa Napoli and the New York Times]
Article comments
1 - Jim Carruthers
AFAIK Virtual Bubble Wrap was created in Toronto by Mackerel Interactive Media for the Mac, and then just went crazy. So, some repect and props, dude.
2 - DrPat
There was a time when I visited the site daily. Boring job, 'nuff said.
Thanks for the reminder! But this is really just a strategy to decoy your competion on the Leaderboard off to pop bubble-wrap, right?
3 - Adam Smith
Virtual Bubblewrap began life as an easter egg in "The Mackerel Stack" - a hypercard (actually, Supercard) promotional piece by Toronto based Mackerel Interactive. The original authors were Dave Groff and Kevin Steele. It dates back to the early 90s.
The first online version was done at Mackerel using an early version of Shockwave and was programmed by Joey deVilla at Mackerel. It shows up on the earliest version of Mackerel's Web site as stored in the Wayback machine.
Often imitated, never bettered.
4 - OpalCat (Katherine)
Just to give my side of the story: my first version of virtual bubblewrap (an html-based imagemap) was in April of 1996. It was on our account's webspace from our ISP in Arizona, the url of which I can no longer remember or I'd look for it at archive.org. Then it was on AOL, then it was on fathom.org, now it's on its own domain at virtual-bubblewrap.com. At the time I created it, I was not aware of any other web-based bubble wrap (and we did look for it on the search engines of the time). I think it's likely that it's one of those things that was inevitable and multiple people came up with it independently. I certainly did not "imitate" anybody.
5 - Kevin Steele
Hi OpalCat / Katherine. Pleased to meet you. I'm Kevin Steele. My partner Dave said the words "Virtual Bubblewrap" then I built the first version I know of.
Dave and I were always pretty sure that you pulled Virtual Bubble Wrap out of the ether independently. Since I never thought it up in the first place, it's easy for me to say the idea was inevitable, but it's the most sensible explanation.
I certainly don’t mind folks like Adam staking Mackerel's claim to inventing it before the web, and bringing it online to coincide with Macromedia's launch of Shockwave, but we would never suggest that you are not also an inventor of virtual bubble wrap.
Now the idea is just out there. See current crop of iPhone apps. None I have tried are a very satisfying simulation, though.
BTW, Dave and I may not be finished with Virtual Bubblewrap. We've been cooking up an idea for a few years and would hope all lovers of virtual bubblewrap would be enthusiastic should we decide to make it happen.