Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

While some tattoos might look cool when you’re in your 20’s, as you age there’s a good chance it might not look as great when you’re ready to retire. So a tattoo ink company called Freedom-2 has developed a new kind of ink that allows a tattoo to be removed with just a single laser treatment, instead of six or seven.

The ink uses microencapsulation, which is the same concept behind scratch and sniff stickers. Basically, water soluble pigments are encased within insoluble polymers to produce microscopic beads that are about 5-6 microns in size. These beads stay intact when applied to the skin making the tattoo visible, but when they’re hit by a laser they bust open, releasing the water soluble pigments and erasing the tattoo.

Unfortunately comparing the tattoos to a scratch and sniff sticker only makes me wish they had tattoos that smelled like Strawberry Shortcake, but looked like a flaming skull. (Or maybe even the other way around.)

[ Erasable Tattoos Work Like Scratch'n'Sniff ]