Pop-less Bubble Wrap? Yet another of life’s little disappointments.

Well, I suppose if you’re Sealed Air Corp, and you’ve found a way to make one of your signature products more affordable while also expanding your market reach, the news is good.

And if you’re a Sealed Air Corp shipping customer that can now store that signature product in far less space, demonstrating solid ROI for purchasing Sealed Air Corp.s signature product, you’re happy.

But if you’re on the receiving end, the little guy opening a package from Amazon or Pottery Barn and finding to your dismay that Sealed Air Corp’s signature product – that would be Bubble Wrap – no longer pops, well, you would be crushed. You’d feel like a tiny bubble, popped between the cruel fingers of yet another big business with little regard for how we the people actually use their product.

Sealed Air Corp has its reasons. And they’re fine reasons. They’re good reasons. They’re business reasons.

BubbleWrap costs a lot to ship. Bubble Wrap costs a lot to store. Bubble Wrap’s product margins were down. Bubble Wrap was shrinking as a proportion of Sealed Air Corp’s business. Bubble Wrap wasn’t keeping up with the competition.

And, what with all the eCommerce and mCommerce going on, packing and shipping materials is a colossal growth industry. Sealed Air Corp wasn’t deriving any benefit from the boom. They weren’t feeling the love. The bubble, as it were, had burst.

Enter iBubble Wrap.

(Let me digress for a bit here. iBubble Wrap! iBubble Wrap? Isn’t prefacing a perfectly good word with a small letter “i” kind of retro. When I – I mean iI – worked for Genuity back in the day when eCommerce was new and mCommerce wasn’t even a twinkle in the Internet’s eye, we used a leading “i” to signal to the world that the Internet was gonna change everything, and we were going to be there to cash in on it. In fact, in 2001, when I was one of the 50 or so home office folks awarded a trip to Hawaii, tagging along for the sales winners circle trip, we lucky few were called iLeaders. iLeader then, Bubble Wrap blogger now. Oh, how the iLeaders have fallen.)

Anyway, back to iBubble Wrap:

…the new packaging is sold in flat plastic sheets that the shipper fills with air using a custom-made pump. The inflated bubbles look much like traditional Bubble Wrap, with one key difference: They don’t burst when pressure is applied. (Source: WSJ Online)

Okay. So their upfront “i” stands for inflated, not Internet. Hmmmm. Come to think of it, given everything that happened to Genuity – spectacularly failed IPO, ignominious bankruptcy - Genuity’s use of the “i” preface was pretty inflated, too.

Charlotte N.C.-based Sealed Air is betting iBubble Wrap will appeal to space-conscious online retailers who are driving swift growth in the global packaging business, even as fans are disappointed by the lack of pop. Traditional Bubble Wrap ships in giant, pre-inflated rolls, taking up precious room in delivery trucks and on customers’ warehouse floors. One roll of the new iBubble Wrap uses roughly one-fiftieth as much space before it’s inflated.

But, but, but, then we don’t get to pop the bubbles, which we’ve been able to do since 1957, when Sealed Air invented Bubble Wrap. Or which we would have been able to do if anything ever got shipped to us, other than the annual Christmas delivery from Chicago or a carton from Chicago containing my grandmother’s pickles. Both shipped via something called Railway Express. Packaging for both consisted of crumpled up newspapers, not Bubble Wrap.

Now, however, a lot of things come packed with the ever-enjoyable, ultra-therapeutic, Bubble Wrap.

Sure, after a few pops, I tend to get bored. But for those few pops, what a moment of pure bliss.

If iBubble Wrap doesn’t take off, Sealed Air may get rid of their bubble packaging business entirely. Perhaps in anticipation:

…Sealed Air changed its logo in 2013 from nine dots, representing Bubble Wrap, to a triangle.

I predict a name change in their near future. After all, sealed air’s what goes into Bubble Wrap, not into Sealed Air’s other products, which use foam and mushrooms. Unfortunately, Genuity is taken by a company “innovating extraordinary advances in corn, soybeans, cotton and specialty crops.”

(iCorn iSoybeans, iCotton, iSpecialty Crops…)

Sealed Air will continue to offer poppable old-timey Bubble Wrap. But, let’s face it, something that’s cheaper to ship and cheaper to store is going to win out over the universal desire for package recipients to pop some bubbles.

Yet another of life’s little disappointments.