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SPRINGVILLE — The moment when kids first see the vehicle-size iridescent bubbles that come from Wonki Wands is what motivates Dorothy Fullerton to share the wands and keep imagining toys.
Wonki Wands is a bubble wand that creates huge bubbles, and while it’s not the first of its kind, Fullerton believes it is the best of its kind. Fullerton and her husband, an engineer named Roger, created the glitter-filled and safety-approved wands after playing with a wooden wand that was difficult for her to use and cracked in the bubble solution.
“I didn’t have as much fun with them as I wanted to.” Fullerton said. “My husband said, I can fix that. I can do something.”
Roger Fullerton came up with a mechanism that keeps the strings from getting tangled and the plastic wands do not warp. Easy enough for a child to use, they realized they had something they could share with others, Dorothy Fullerton said.
“When you first see it, it is an amazing moment. I’m 57 years old, and I had never seen a bubble that big,” Dorothy Fullerton said. “I knew there were bubbles, I played with bubbles my whole life, I was a bubble lover, but I’d never seen a bubble that was the size of a vehicle. It’s amazing when you first see that bubble come out.”
Operating under Wonki Toys — named for the oddly shaped bubbles the wands produce — the Fullertons are ready to sell their bubble wand online. The couple uses their grandkids as testers, and Dorothy Fullerton said she loves watching them play together outside.
“Bubbles have been around forever and everybody likes bubbles,” Dorothy Fullerton said. “But these huge ones are something that just takes you to another dimension. It’s kind of hard to describe until you actually see one. Then you watch that thing float away, and it’s huge.”
She said she frequents parks with her grandkids, where other children ignore the playground equipment as soon as they see the bubbles. She loves watching people experience the large, misshapen bubbles for the first time.
“I have said many times to my husband even if we couldn’t take this to any job-type level, I would still go do this,” Dorothy Fullerton said. “I would take these to the parks because you make friends with everybody.”
The Fullertons hope to continue inventing toys with the hope that kids will be motivated to get outside.
“Kids are on devices too much nowadays. They all have these handheld things and they don’t get outside,” she said. “It's heartwarming to be able to see them actually put down their cellphones and put down their video games and go outside and do something that is special.”
