Colored bubbles?

Popular Science has an article detailing one mans obsession with coloring bubbles. As it turns out adding color to bubbles is very difficult thing to accomplish. After years of toiling away by a chemist and an inventor, colored bubbles will hit the store shelves soon (I know I will be keeping an eye out for them) in colors ranging from black to pink.
What I find exciting is the that the product development process (my guess is there were no ISO audits involved) required the invention of a new class of dies that disapears when exposed to oxygen or friction. So, in the end, while the goal was bubbles (a toy), the effort required the invention of something that is potentially far more useful than a novelty item.