This post is an extract from The Retro Machine (Vol 2) posted by Spencer over at RetroJunk.

When I was a kid, every self-respecting toy line pretty much had to have a slime-related component. The Masters of the Universe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Ghostbusters all had slime.

For those of you (not to be sexist, but probably girls) who never had the pleasure of playing with it, slime was a wet, gooey, giant snot-like substance that toy companies shoved into little plastic jars that were bundled with the favorite toys of your male counterparts.

For the Ninja Turtles, the slime was known as “Retromutagen” and was sold in little canisters like the one pictured above. Inside you would find yourself a plastic baby turtle (if you remember, it was the “Retromutagen” that was responsible for turning regular turtles into walking, talking, pizza eating mutants).

I have to say though that my favorite use of toy slime ever was with the “Real Ghostbusters” line of toys. In the Ghostbusters universe, the slime is “ecto-plazm”, a residue left behind by the manifestation of ghosts. You’d get a tub of slime every time you bought something Ghostbusters related (complete with little plastic ghost inside), so rest assured there was plenty of slime to douse your action figures with. As you see in the file photo (above right), my friend Jeff and his cousin Lindsay used the Ecto-Plazm to give a Ray Stanz figure the slime of his life. My friend Jeff actually had a ton of Ghostbusters figures and made good use of his slime. He’d have it on the walls, in the carpet, and as you can see above, covering the patio. After a certain time, his parents confiscated any new slime he received.