'Pop' icon Bubble Wrap turns 50

SADDLE BROOK, N.J. -- People have walked to the altar dressed in it, protected their garden plants with it, even put it on display at highbrow art museums.

Mostly, they like the sound it makes when they destroy it, piece by piece, which largely explains the appeal of Bubble Wrap, the stress reducer disguised as package cushioning that maintains an inexplicable hold on pop culture.

The product turns 50 this month, and enthusiasts' obsession with it has spawned more than 250 Facebook pages devoted to Bubble Wrap.

Like many innovations, Bubble Wrap initially was conceived for an entirely different purpose. According to Aurichio, a New York City designer approached inventors Marc Chavannes and Al Fielding in the late 1950s with a proposal for creating textured wallpaper.

That idea stalled, but the product the two men had created in a small lab in New Jersey found its niche when, according to company lore, Fielding was flying into Newark Airport and noticed the fluffy clouds that seemed to cushion the plane's descent.

Sealed Air employee Eddie Ruiz moves giant rolls of Bubble Wrap at the company's plant in Saddle Brook, N.J. (CHRISTOPHER BARTH ~ Associated Press)

Fifty years later, Sealed Air has global revenue of more than $4 billion and legions of fans who have come up with myriad uses for Bubble Wrap.

"It seems like every day there's something new," said Rohn Shellenberger, the company's business manager for air cellular products.

Sealed Air's 100,000-square-foot warehouse is an obsessive-compulsive's dream, with row upon row of stacked rolls of Bubble Wrap as big as seven feet in diameter.

The temperature is sweat-inducing, caused by the machines that process millions of granules of resin into clear plastic sheets at temperatures up to 560 degrees.

Shellenberger pops one myth about Bubble Wrap; namely, that air is injected into all those tiny bubbles. Instead, it is trapped between the sheets after they pass over several rollers, one of which creates the indentations for the bubbles.

Two apparently disparate forces conspired to shape Bubble Wrap's growth: The advent of the transistor -- and later the personal computer with all its accessories -- which made the shipping of delicate electronic components a multibillion-dollar industry; and the Internet, which provided a forum for fanatics to swap stories and cement Bubble Wrap as a cultural icon.

It's difficult to imagine Chavannes and Fielding, both now deceased, having any inkling that their invention would inspire such silliness or find its way into movies ("Wall-E," "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective"), television ("Monk") and high culture (Museum of Modern Art exhibit, 2009).

Then there's the true badge of hipness (for now, at least): A bubble-popping application for Apple's iPhone.