Betting on Bubbles : Toys: Entrepreneur John La Fata hopes to clean up with his state-of-the-art line of soap-blowing gadgets.

You could call John La Fata’s life story a soap opera.

The Oxnard Shores resident has spent the past 20 years perfecting toys for blowing bubbles.

“I want to be known as the Coke or McDonald’s of bubbles,” the 43-year-old entrepreneur said, looking around his sleek corporate office littered with plastic playthings.

La Fata, who holds a patent for wands that make bubbles within bubbles, has tried for years to hawk a line of toys that he and his late cousin invented. But it seems that some critics have been more intent on bursting La Fata’s bubbles than believing in them.

La Fata said he hopes that his newest toy--a plastic bellows that lets players squeeze out bubbles and then shoot them down with squirts of water--will catapult him to success.

The product, called Blastos, is one of several state-of-the-art bubble toys manufactured by La Fata’s 18-month old company, Toy Originators Inc. The firm also produces a wand for making giant bubbles and one that creates many bubbles with one blow. Another pocket-sized bubble set clips onto a child’s belt.

The toys, which range in price from $3 to $20, are sold by more than 2,000 businesses nationwide and are also marketed in four foreign countries, he said.

La Fata said that in the first six months of last year the firm reached over $500,000 in sales, and this year sales have totaled more than $2 million.

Amy Lawrence, who owns a South Carolina toy store, said that she has great luck with the toy that produces multiple bubbles, but discontinued two other products because they did not sell spectacularly.

But others said the toys sell well. At the Village Toy Store in Mendocino, adults have gone crazy over the Blastos, Bill Carr said. “There seems to be bubble nuts in the world,” he said. “There are people who love to make bubbles.”

La Fata himself often lathers on about bubbles, pointing out that they are more than just objects of play.

“I think bubbles are taken for granted,” La Fata said. “It’s such a beautiful art form.”

Bubbles reflect every color of the rainbow. Each one is unique. And, best of all, they can’t hurt you, he pointed out.

“Aren’t those beautiful bubbles?” La Fata said, waving a wand from one of his toys back and forth. “I never get tired of this.”

But La Fata admits that bubbles were not his favorite toy as a child. He preferred making water fountains from tomato sauce cans.

“He was always an inventor,” La Fata’s mother, Angelina, 71, said. “I was always afraid to lay anything around the house because I never knew what he was going to do with it.”

La Fata said he was attracted to the bubble business at age 22 when his cousin John Dee Cuccio invented a toy that produced a continuous stream of bubbles when it was swung by a rope.

The two set up shop in Cuccio’s Ojai garage, using the bed of an old truck for a workbench. They toiled until 5 a.m. when they were inspired, and prayed for ideas at a neighborhood church when they were not.

Meanwhile, La Fata worked a construction job and made portable toilets for money. After graduating from Ventura College, he turned down a scholarship to design school to devote more time to the bubble toys.

But the soap opera’s happy ending was yet to come. About 25 companies rejected La Fata’s toys. Two companies over the years produced the toys, but one went bankrupt and the other went through a series of management changes before the partnership was discontinued.

So, La Fata said, he decided to start his own company, although it meant living on the financial edge. La Fata said his family has been supportive through the rough times.

But his three children have found negative aspects to their father’s firm, he said.

“They’re about bubbled out.”