ISSUE 1
In order to understand the origins of The Bubble (and the Bubblegum Club) we need to take you back to the summer of 1996 - that's when the first ever range of Bubblegum greeting cards appeared in the shops.

These cute and funky characters were an immediate success and over the next few years, more and more characters were added to the gang and soon the Bubblegum bods were everywhere! As their popularity grew, so did the amount of letters and pictures being sent to Carlton Cards (the creators of Bubblegum) from an ever growing number of Bubblegum fans. In fact it soon became clear that the only way to deal with the situation was to set up a dedicated fan club for the characters - so in November of 2000, the Bubblegum Club was born. The club was formed by Dave (that's me) and Gina Iddon with the help of Helen Warburton. It was Gina and Helen's job to deal with the Bubblegum Club members which included sending out new membership packs and dealing with the hundreds of letters and e-mails we received each week. I meanwhile, took care of the Bubblegum Club website and the quarterly Bubble magazine - issue 1 of which, was sent out to the very first Bubblegum Club members in November 2000.

ISSUES 2 - 4 The first 12 months of the Bubblegum Club were as hectic as you'd imagine. We were settling into our new offices (which were situated over a launderette!), signing up lots of new members and the website was proving to be extremely popular. It was jolly hard work but great fun at the same time - and we even got to get dolled up for an awards ceremony...

ISSUE 5
The second year of the Bubblegum Club got off to the perfect start as Gina and I waltzed off down to London to attend the Yell.com internet awards.

The club site had been nominated in the best childrens' website category, so it was evening gowns and penguin suits all round. Even though we just missed out of first prize, it certainly made the previous 12 month's hard work seem all the more worthwhile. ISSUES 6 - 9 With club membership now well over a thousand and growing all the time, The Bubble magazine was beginning to burst at the seams with all your letters, pictures and photos. So by the time we reached issue 9, we had to add an extra 4 pages to stuff everything in!

ISSUES 10 - 13
The Bubble was now building to the peak of it's popularity and the fan club members were getting involved in all aspects of Bubblegum.

Even as far as creating new bods, which would eventually appear on greeting cards, and coming up with names for some of the Bubblegum Petz - Milkshake the Cat, Picasso the Pigeon, Horse Radish and Bleep the Sheep to name but a few.

ISSUE 14 This was the first and only issue of The Bubble to completely sell out. We've still got one or two copies filed around the office as keepsakes but from issue 15 onwards we had to print more copies to keep up with the demand! ISSUES 15 - 18 We were now 4 years into the Bubblegum Club and halfway through that fourth year came our first major upheaval. After three and a half years we'd simply outgrown the old office. There was so much Bubblegum stuff crammed into that little room above the launderette, Helen was in grave danger of disappearing under an avalanche! The only option was to move to larger premises and we ended up in the former offices of an old cotton mill - or "Bubble@Mill" as we liked to call it.