The 11-Year Quest to Create Disappearing Colored Bubbles

His first attempt, in 1989, was a board game about recycling called Save the Earth that was about as much fun as it sounds. Toy companies were unimpressed, but one rejection letter pointed Kehoe to an independent toy rep named Frank Young. Kehoe hounded him for months with dozens of ideas, until finally Young gave the tenacious kid $30,000 a year to create toys for him full-time. For the next year, Kehoe worked day or night, whenever inspiration hit. Young's confidence (and the casual, come-and-go schedule) fueled Kehoe's creativity, and the ideas poured out: a toy truck with tires that children could pump to monster-truck size; colored sand that hardens in an Easy-Bake toy oven; colored soap bubbles.

Colored soap bubbles! Of course! Everyone loves blowing bubbles. It seemed such a simple and perfect idea, the kind that would leave other inventors slapping their foreheads and saying Why didn't I think of that? Kehoe says, "I remember walking down to the store thinking, â€This is so easy. I'm going to be rich!' "

"I started with Jell-O, because I thought, â€Well, it's got pretty intense color.' So I mixed Jell-O and Ivory soap. I got nothing." Undeterred, he went back to the store and tried food coloring. Then hair dye. Then ink. Within weeks, he was taking Sherri on dates to the grocery store, where he would buy as many colored products as he could afford. Back in his kitchen, he'd dump the Fruit Roll-Ups or Juicy Juice into a pan, heat it on the stove until he figured the color was loosened up, and pour in the dish soap. Only clear bubbles emerged.

When he realized that the answer probably couldn't be found on a store shelf, he started studying patents and reading about surfactants. "I'd see a chemical mentioned in a patent, and when we had some extra money, I'd order it and start mixing," he says. Once he tried nitric acid, a toxic chemical that gives off red fumes at room temperature. "I got it making a really cool bubble, but it could've killed somebody," he recalls. "It ate through clothes."