Expert: Marilyn - 5/18/2004

Question
I am traveling to Kenya, Africa on June 7. I want to know if I can buy a bunch of bubble blowers (withOUT bubbles) to take with us. We will make the bubbles when we get there. We will be taking them to a school/orphanage where the beautiful children have FEW toys. Can you help me? Thanks. Bonnie Mayers

Answer
Hi Bonnie,

What a wonderful treat to take with you. I know one place that sells the plain bubble wands, but the minimum order is something like 24,000 -- which I'd guess is many more than you want.

What I would suggest is that you check out orientaltrading.com -- they have a lot of cheap bubble stuff. Most of the prices you see will be for 1-4 dozen of the items. Some of the bottles come with solution, but you can just dump it for your trip. Check out this URL:
http://www.orientaltrading.com/otcweb/application?namespace=browse&origin=mainLe...

A couple of suggestions:
(1) the bottles that have snap off tops can be difficult for kids to open; you might want ones that screw off.
(2) wands that are solid plastic ovals or circles work better than ones that are pointed -- though the second ones fit in narrow bottles, they sometimes collapse and are hard for kids to use.
(3) if you get bottles, you will probably want them to have wide necks so they can be easily refilled.
(4) some of the smaller screw cap wider-neck bottles have wands that fold to fit in the small jars -- I have no idea how well these folding wands work.

Some possibles (enter item number in the search box:

IN-12/1938 -- 2 doz small bottles with folding wand at $5
IN-4/2336 -- same as above but on sale at $4 for 2 dozen
IN-12/502 -- 1 doz larger bottles with good wand at $4 (actually these look perfect for small hands, good blowing, and easy refilling.
IN-12/2320 -- 4 dozen tiny bottles with snap-off caps but good wands at $5 for 4 dozen -- very compact
IN-12/2096 -- 2 dozen tiny bottes with animals on the snap-off lids -- $5 for 2 dozen -- awfully cute!

Hope this is helpful. I'm sure you are limited by space, but perhaps some of these will work. They certainly will travel well when emptied.

ACTUALLY, if you think items like these will work, I have a bunch of little Christmas and Halloween and assorted ones I'll empty and send you for free -- let me know how many you need and I'll be happy to donate some. Email me at doyle022@mninter.net (that is doyle-zero-two-two).

Marilyn
http://www.BubbleBlowers.com