Zubbles were invented in 2005, but they have been in commercial limbo until now. Kids and adults can now buy two bottles for $15 at the Zubble web site.

Bubbles are the most popular toy on Earth—even bigger than Lego—with 200 million bottles sold annually. Stainless colored bubbles where believed to be chemically impossible, but inventor Tim Kehoe spent 15 years and $3 million making his daydream a reality. Hopefully, they will work out for him, because I like zubbles. I like plain bubbles too. And I love Bubble Toes:

[Zubbles via Discovery via Infoaddict—Thanks Rosa!]

According to the Bubble Fogger's Amazon listing, this marvelous contraption creates fog solution-filled bubbles and casts them out into the Halloween kitsch-filled ether that is your home in October. When the bubbles pop, most likely in your eyes or on stain prone furniture, they become fog. The kit includes both the bubble and fog solution, and will set you back $40. As far as over-priced, short-lived Halloween crap goes, that's kind of a bargain. [Amazon via Random Good Stuff]

You hang the device on your shower head. The included proprietary cleaner bottles gravity-feed into the rotating nozzle and pump, powered by 4 AA batteries. You push a button after you're done showering and after half a minute of warning beeps, the turret fires off the cleaning fluid in a 360-degree pattern. It's supposed to be a robotic anti shower dirt artillery cannon. It is is not.

Over a few weeks, a mild and inexcusable pattern of soap scum (infantry in the army of shower gunk) built up onto my bathtub. Was it by chance some serious buildup? No. Some strong stuff in the purple squirt bottle applied and a non abrasive sponge took it right off.

Honestly, I think they're selling this thing on the fantasy of clean bathrooms and fear of mildew alone. The snake oil product, which I tested for about two months, might make a good base for an automated scarecrow weapon in the garden triggered by some motion sensor. But it won't do anything for your bathtub that a sponge, some elbow grease and the most caustic material your lungs and skin can handle can't do better and cheaper. Especially the original Scrubbing Bubbles stuff, which I am a fan of.

Robot bathroom cleaner, zero; human domestic man servant, 1.

UPDATE: Just got this hate mail from this guy, josh.pruitt@gmail.com

This is clearly an angry attack on a product. Lots of people I know
(self included) use this product and have been satisfied with its
performance for years. The article is completely biased and shows a
lack of research. There's no indication that Brian contacted Arm &
Hammer for help with finding out why the product wasn't performing as
expected. Just because a product doesn't work for you doesn't mean
it's "snake oil." This product isn't even related to the theme of
Gizmodo.

"Hello Arm and Hammer, your thingy I bought doesn't work. Can you please explain why? Oh, ok. Good answer. Thanks. Bye." *goes back to using lame shower cleaner with a deeper understanding of why it fucking sucks.*

By filming the resulting jets of foam, and doing some Scanning Electron Microscope analysis, they've ruled out chemical interactions, and have discovered it's to do with the surface roughness of the Mentos, the sugariness of the drink and how quickly the mints sink.

These factors all affect formation of carbon-dioxide bubbles: the spikes on the Mentos aid micro-bubble formation (see mint ones on the SEM image on the left, fruit on the right); non-sugary Diet Coke works best as it's got lower surface tension; and the dense Mentos sink quickly, creating bubbles at the base of the bottle that cause spontaneous formation of other bubbles higher up. All that results in very rapid bubble-formation, and that then causes the satisfying squirt of brown goo from the bottle neck.

So now you know: science is fun. [New Scientist]

Er, did the voice behind the disembodied hand waving around the RC just refer to two of the light effects as "Tylenol" and "Viagra?" There's also an aromatherapy function for the full-on Julie Patchouli effect. Cost is $249 from Aquallusion. [GeekAlerts via TFTS]

Underwater Express Program [Via SCI FI]

And then the bubbles broke on the kids, on the parents, on cars, on Haddleton's prized German Shepherds. It looked like there had been a paint fight. Kehoe had told the parents that the color would wash out, but it didn't matter. Not when their children were covered head to toe in blue and pink splotches, when the color was getting into their shoes and hair and soaking into the concrete. In the faces of the horrified mothers, Kehoe immediately grasped the lesson. "You can't go to market with something that leaves that much color, even if it is washable," he says. "It freaks people out."

Kehore partnered with a chemist and hundreds of experiments later, built a "dye molecule from an unstable base structure called a lactone ring..." Okay, but what you really need to know is that Zubbles should be available in stores come February. And Kehoe is working on some new potential uses for his disappearing colors: vanishing hair dye, soap, toothpaste, even temporary wall paints.

The 11-Year Quest to Create Disappearing Colored Bubbles [Popular Science]
[Thanks Joshua!]