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A prop that's shaped like a tobacco pipe, but is clearly not on account of the fact that it blows soap bubbles. Related to No Smoking, as it is used instead of a real pipe as it gives the same impression without the implications of tobacco use. It's seen often when children dress up as Sherlock Holmes, or in attempt to look fancy, sophisticated or other similar ways.
Compare Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe, of which this trope is an affectionate diminutive.
Examples of Bubble Pipe include:
Anime and Manga
- Kyouya Ootori does this as the caterpillar in the Alice in Wonderland parody episode of Ouran High School Host Club.
- In Naruto the jinchuuriki of the six tails, Utakata has a pipe he blows bubbles out of as part of his combat style
Film
- Garth holds one the morning after his first night with Honey Hornée in Wayne's World 2. It's not revealed until the very end of the scene that it's a Bubble Pipe.
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Garth: Party on! |
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Live Action Television
- The episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch where her friend ends up in the Other Realm has the woman who reads out the laws of said realm blow on a bubble pipe when she's having her conversation with Sabrina.
- In one Cheers episode, Diane dreams that Sam reveals himself as debonair and sophisticated, including smoking a pipe. When she wakes up, she goes to where the pipe was and finds that it really exists. Then she blows into it, and bubbles come out.
- Wyatt Cenac busts one out when pontificating on the distinction between ascots and neckerchiefs on The Daily Show.
- Alfred Hitchcock is seen using one in the episode "The Perfect Crime" of Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Newspaper Comics
- Jason uses one in FoxTrot whenever he has delusions of being a millionaire and is trying to look sophisticated.
- In the Garfield comics, Jon uses a bubble pipe once or twice. Garfield himself once blew soap bubbles with a real pipe:
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Jon: My ivory-stemmed, mother-of-pearl inlaid meerschaum! |
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Video Games
- The Sims 2's University expansion introduced colorful bubble blowers that raised the Sims' fun meter at record speed, made them giggle a lot and eventually made them float in the air.
Webcomics
- Quilt the necromatic golem uses one several times in Dominic Deegan. [1] Later actually used for something when he uses the bubbles as crystal balls as an alternative form of scrying, since crystal balls and other orthodox methods are being monitored.
- Final page of Masters Of The Art, a recently ended Web Comic.
- Girls with Slingshots: Jamie has one as part of her Holmes-inspired "Romance Detective" look.
Western Animation
- In The Simpsons:
- Bart blows bubbles from his pipe when he falls in love with an older girl and ends up dressing like Hugh Hefner.
- Bart also uses a bubble pipe when visiting the real Hugh Hefner in "Krusty Gets Kancelled".
- Used once in Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, when Nazz was babysitting at Eddy's house and he believed that it was a date.
- Yakko Warner of Animaniacs (who is actually in his 60s, but has the mind of a child) once "puffed" on a soap-bubble pipe while parodying highbrow intellectuals.
- In a Veggie Tales pastiche of Sherlock Holmes, the Sherlock character has a bubble pipe, and at one point he inhales by accident and chokes on the soap.
- Sokka in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
- Beezy on Jimmy Two-Shoes uses one on occassion.
- Snoopy dons one of these in a Peanuts special, It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown, where he's playing a detective trying to find Woodstock's nest. Complete with a Running Gag of where the one large bubble goes...
- Master Shake of Aqua Teen Hunger Force has one in the episode Two and a Half Star Wars Out of Five when he suspects that the Pink Man is a werewolf. He also adopts Sherlock Holmes-like speech.
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He is a werewolf, Fryman. He saw Carl's full moon, and it changed him. |
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- The Powerpuff Girls make use of this in the body swap episode: The Professor, who is sometimes seen with a pipe, had swapped bodies with Buttercup. He's seen with it later as Buttercup, but it humorously turns out to be a bubble pipe instead.
- SpongeBob SquarePants has used a bubble pipe in at least one episode. Not much of a surprise, considering how he blows bubbles in roughly 95% of the series, including entire episodes dedicated to them.
- True to the trope's description, Simon uses a bubble pipe (that he borrowed from Alvin) in the Sherlock Holmes episode of Alvin and The Chipmunks. He, naturally, plays Holmes.
- In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, Pinkie Pie and later Twilight Sparkle sport one of these while dressed up like Sherlock Holmes in the episode "MMMystery on the Friendship Express". One of the show's background characters, an elderly stallion named Mr. Waddle, has the image of a bubble pipe as his cutie mark, and another bubble pipe cutie mark is included in the Virtual Paper Doll Web Games The Fabulous Ponymaker and Rarity's Bridal Boutique.
- In Muppet Babies, Beaker doesn't just imitate Sherlock; he uses the bubbles as a weapon against an allergic opponent. (How he determined the allergy is hard to defend, but in a kiddie Imagine Spot it hardly matters.)