When I was little, my big sister and I would turn the family bathroom into a bubble factory, completely drenching it in soapy water. We would lather our hands until they were sudsy and white and then cup them slightly as magic began to brew into our hands and a swirling mass, dashed with color, would appear, break off and then float from our faces.

We would compete to see who was the better bubble blower and if memory serves me correctly, I always won. When Mom caught sight of the wet floor and soap-stained mirror, the creativity moved outdoors, each of us equipped with a bottle of bubbles.

Bubbles have an appeal that transcends ages. Usually when you turn 11, the Barbie dolls and GI Joes get traded in for makeup or video games. But you’ll never have to pack up your bubbles. Timelessness is perhaps their greatest trait.

The liquid balls, however, are no longer limited by the small bottles and wands commonly used to blow them. Bubbles are now big enough to accommodate six or more people. There are bubble guns, bubble machines, battery-powered bubbles …

In Old Town, a barber is bringing the joy of bubbles to his customers.

Carl Nevells, owner of Carl’s Barbershop on North Main Street, has a bubble machine outside his shop. He saw a bubble machine in front a Texas business two years ago and decided to bring the concept to Maine.

“As kids we always had them, we always spilled them and always made a mess with them,” Nevells recalled. “Everyone always enjoys them. We have folks from 4 years to 85 years who are on the sidewalk playing with them and poking them.”

For Richard Flaverty, aka “Professor Bubbles,” who calls Las Vegas home, bubbles have become a wonderful obsession. Flaverty, who went into photography after graduating from college in the 1960s, has managed to make a career out of bubbles. A photo assignment in 1980 for the French magazine Paris Match, changed his career path. The assignment: to photograph Americans with bubbles.

Flaverty got creative.

“I figured I could probably put someone inside of a bubble,” he said recently, “So I put my 3-year-old daughter inside of one. It turned out that I was the first person in the world to enclose someone in a soap bubble.”

That one idea sparked hundreds.

“The bubbles had a life of their own,” Flaverty said. “I kept putting people in bubbles – athletes, pregnant women, naked women, meditating people, people on their heads, businessmen and women -everything I could think of.”

After a 1985 appearance on a show in Tokyo, Flaverty began doing shows around the world. Today, the Professor’s bubbles have carried him to 36 countries. He has published a book on bubbles, “Professor Bubbles’ Official Bubble Handbook” and has designed about a dozen toys for U.S. toy companies. In 1999 he entered the Guinness Book of World Records – he fit six people inside a soap bubble.

Flaverty made a profession out of something that is fun and unique.

“When I started doing this it was an excitement of doing something no one had done before,” Flaverty said. “I really enjoy the soap bubbles and someone early on in my life said make sure you do something you love.

“To see the look of a kid, who is being put inside a soap bubble – the look of wonder – is payment enough for doing a show,” he said. “Then the parents want to get inside and they are just as excited.”

There are many reasons why bubbles appeal to people of all ages.

“They are simple, they are safe and they are beautiful,” Faverty said. “The appeal of bubbles crosses all age, language and socioeconomic boundaries.”

Toy companies have jumped on the bubble craze.

Tootsietoy, a division of the Strombecker Corporation in Chicago, is the world’s largest manufacturer of bubble-blowing toys. The company sells about 50 million bottles of Mr. Bubbles(r) every year.

Dan Shure, president and chief executive officer of Strombecker, said bubbles are the best selling and most popular toys in the world.

“From a bottle you can get half a million single bubbles and if you multiple that by the number of bottles sold – do the math, that’s billions of bubbles – that’s a whole lot of bubbles,” he said.

Shure said there is a jump in bubble sales around Easter and the bubble buying clientele has changed as more bubble toys are created. Bubbles are no longer just for little ones; older children and adults are playing with them.

“Five years ago there was no such thing as a battery operated bubble toy,” Shure said. “Now probably about 35 percent of the business is in battery-operated bubble toys.”

Older people, especially, like to play with the Endless Bubble Gun, which is the No. 1 bubble toy in the country for the last two years. A bottle of bubbles is screwed into the base of the gun and will blow bubbles until empty.

Shure doesn’t just sell the toys.

“On the weekend I sit outside my house with all our bubble toys and spend a great deal of my weekend just playing,” he says.

Bubbles have the power to bring out the child in people and few are immune to their magic.

When I return home for family visits and my sister and I wash up for dinner, I’m tempted to blow a soap bubble at her. Can she make one bigger than mine? But I’m an adult now so of course that doesn’t happen.

But just say that it did, and if Mom caught us, I would revert to the days when I was 7 years old and the bathroom was a mess.

Well, she started it.