Foam parties are for kids — both big and small

North End

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/06/2023 (946 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You know something — at 58 years old I still have the playfulness of a child. I recently started a part-time job doing foam parties. A friend of a friend started a business called Fantastic Foam Parties in 2017, which was the year I first encountered a foam, outside a bar in Gimli, where I was visiting.

What is a foam party, you ask?

Remember when you were young, and your mom or dad would fill the bathtub for you and add bubble bath (Mr. Bubble was the brand I remember) and the bubbles would rise and rise as the tub filled up? Your first few minutes in the tub had nothing to do with getting clean. Ah, the good old days.

Now imagine a back yard full of bubbles over seven-feet high, that you can actually run through with all your friends. That’s what a foam party is.

Nothing spells fun more than a yard full of screaming kids disappearing in an ocean of bubbles or foam. Now, I’ve never had children of my own but have watched the children of my sisters, friends, relatives and nieces grow up over the years, and watching them play always brought me back to those sweet childhood memories.

Jackie Hutchinson has sent her five foam machines to over 300 parties in the six years since she started Fantastic Foam Parties — and kids aren’t the only ones who have enjoyed these parties. Her foam machines have showed up at staff parties, family celebrations, sports windups, graduation parties and block parties, to mention just a few.

So far, I have been the attendant (and set-up/tear-down guy) at a birthday party for six-year-old twin girls. The party was booked for an hour (some are three hours or more) and as soon as the bubbles started blowing out of the machine, the kids had a ball. They even brought chairs and balls into the foam. Heck, it looked like so much fun I even felt like jumping in and even the girls’ parents confided later that they also had the urge to jump in.