Grillin' Bubbles

Whereas some avid grilling enthusiasts pull out the steaks and corn ears, Helios and Hesperos celebrate the summer outdoor cooking season with a bubble grill, thanks to Grandma Jane and Grandpa Mel. Having not yet mastered the ability to blow bubbles (excluding the saliva kind that are particularly abundant at the most inopportune times), Helios and Hesperos often have to resort to creative antics to coax fragile and elusive iridescent orbs from their tiny wands. These antics include running jerkily at high speeds to generate enough of a wind tunnel to create bubbles (and more often resulting in running into a tree or wall) and standing in front of Mommy and Daddy and demanding repetitively to "blow bubbles, blow bubbles!"

Thanks, though, to the generosity of Grandma Jane and Grandpa Mel, torture of parents and aggressive boy-swatting trees are a thing of the past. Our home was recently graced with a gift that only the Home Shopping Network (and Grandpa Mel's speedy dialing fingers) could give them -- a bubble grill! With a built in fan, the boys can now generate not only the humdrum, pedestrian orbs of old, but also bubbles ostensibly in the shape of tomato slices (circles), pickle slices (circles), burgers (circles), and onions (circles). In short, regardless of the utensil used to create the bubbles, the end result is still ... an orb. (Did the toy designers at Gazillion take any kind of physics classes...ever?)

Creative marketing and packaging aside, it is a great toy that, along with the super concentrated bubble liquid that requires 30-minute long baths to scrub off, is much enjoyed by these little soapy chefs.