‘Barbie was my queen, Hulk Hogan a flop’: the rise and fall of novelty bubble bath bottles

here is a tall black cabinet in London filled with 150 bottles and 300 unblinking eyes. It’s always strange seeing part of your childhood in a museum, but I never expected to be reminded of my mortality by a yellow plastic bottle moulded into the spikes of Bart Simpson’s head. “I had that! On the edge of my bathtub 20 years ago!” I thought earlier this year as I stared into the display of character-shaped bubble bath bottles at thein Notting Hill.

During his first year of business in 1975, Beecham sold 12,000 bottles for around £39,000, but as his company grew he stayed in contact with friends in the US. “I started getting letters from my pals in America and they said, ‘Robert, have you heard of War Star or Star Rolls or Star World or whatever?’ I said, ‘what are you talking about?’” Beecham recalls. The very firstfilm was released in May 1977 in America, but it hadn’t yet reached the UK. Beecham smelled an opportunity.

Thankfully, the movie did Beecham’s job for him. Enamoured sales reps clamoured to get Beecham’s product – his range was released in time for Christmas. Writing in theon 22 December 1977, columnist Keith Waterhouse recommended swapping bog-standard giftsets for Beecham’s stuff: “I suggest for once that you get on the ball and invest inbath salts,” he joked. “The bubble bath market didn’t know what happened to it,” says Beecham.

It was, at times, challenging work. When designing a Pocahontas bottle, Little got “carried away” with sculpting the intricate figurine and forgot about how much bubble bath he needed to fit inside. Pocahontas was designed to be diving off a rock, “so the rock started getting bigger” to hold the liquid. “It was more like a mountain when we finished,” jokes Little’s wife, Helen, who worked on production at Grosvenor.

Someone who appreciated the hard work was Beverley Heyworth, 55, an NHS worker from Manchester, who began collecting character bubble bath 30 years ago. Today, she has more than 800 in storage. In the 90s, Heyworth took advantage of Boots’ 3-for-2 deals to stock up on bottles – she would use the product and ship empty containers to buyers around the world. “I was squeaky clean,” she laughs.

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