When we did stupid things.

The other day I encountered (or imagined) a smell that brought back memories. So I sent an email to John entitled, "What Was That Stuff?"

For some reason yesterday I smelled a smell that brought back memories. An odd smell, close to unpleasant, but actually attractive.
The smell I remember came from some kind of rubbery/plastically substance that we used to roll into little balls, into which we stuck tiny straws in order to blow out big rubbery balloons.The balloons had great texture, and if one ever developed a hole you could just pinch it closed.
Probably double-hydrogenated plutonium???
Can you help me out?

John wrote back with a link:

Super Elastic Bubble Plastic was the brand name for a children's toy manufactured from the 1970s through the 80s by Wham-O. It consisted of a tube of viscous plastic substance and a thin straw used to blow semi-solid bubbles. A pea-sized amount of liquid plastic was squeezed from the tube and made into a tiny ball. One end of the straw was then inserted into the ball, and the user would blow into the other end, inflating the plastic into a bubble. The bubble could then be removed from the straw by pinching the hole closed, sealing the air inside.

And...
Chemically, the bubbles contained polyvinyl acetate dissolved in acetone, with ethyl acetate plastic fortifiers added. The acetone evaporated upon bubble inflation leaving behind a solid plastic film.

One of those toxic chemicals had a memorable awful/alluring aroma. And, if I'm not mistaken, we would sometime chew a wad of the stuff.

Of course, we also played with liquid mercury, rubbing it on our fingers. And we were quite unrestrained in our use of cherry-bombs (which we were quite sure worked under water), actually setting one off in the laundry tub in a friend's basement. Needless to say, the only thing left after that experiment was a huge puddle littered with bits of concrete.

Somehow, some of us survived childhood.