Opinion: Jell-O cashes in on slime craze with an edible versionBy Maura Judkis, Washington Post, adapted by Newsela staff01/31/2019

Image 1. Slime has become popular and there are many types: glitter slime, magnetic slime, glow-in-the-dark slime and now even edible slime. Photo by Stacy Zarin Goldberg/The Washington Post

Probably because I am not a 7-year-old, I did not understand the appeal of slime at first.

The stuff is everywhere now. It is all over the Internet, and there are even YouTube slime celebrities. I'm told by friends who have children that kids sell each other special slime. That might sound pretty ridiculous, but then I remember when I was in the fourth grade, people paid real money for colorful cardboard discs called Pogs. We also had Floam, a type of moldable ooze filled with Styrofoam balls. Maybe every generation needs a pointless, dumb, messy, squishy, disgusting substance to play with.

There are so many types of slime. There is glitter slime, magnetic slime and glow-in-the-dark slime. Weirdest of all, and somewhat disturbingly, there is also edible glowing blood slime. 

Many kids make their own slime from recipes they find online. For the nonedible kind, borax solution is the main ingredient. Cornstarch is the main ingredient for the edible variety. 

Image 2. In December 2018, Jell-O released a powdered slime mix that would be easy for kids and parents to make. It comes in two flavors: monster slime (lime) and unicorn slime (strawberry). Photo by: Stacy Zarin Goldberg/The Washington Post [click to expand]

In December 2018, Jell-O released a powdered slime mix that would be easy for kids and parents to make. It comes in two flavors: monster slime (lime) and unicorn slime (strawberry). Photo by: Stacy Zarin Goldberg/The Washington Post [click to expand]

However, the food company Jell-O saw an opportunity in the slime craze, and decided to get in the game. In December, it released a powdered slime mix that it says is very easy for kids and parents to make. It comes in two flavors: lime-flavored monster slime and strawberry-flavored unicorn slime.

The instructions are quite simple. All you have to do is dump three scoops of slime powder into a bowl, and add around one scoop of water. We found that a scoop and a half of water worked best.

Half Solid, Half Liquid, All Fun

Once I was wrist-deep in strawberry slime, I started to see the appeal. This stuff is like a weird science project! It's somewhere between a solid and a liquid. You can roll it into a ball, but once you let it sit on your palm for a few seconds, it will melt right through your fingers. If you pull it tight, you can rip it in half, but you can also stretch it like a stringy, melted cheese. I had no idea how the heck it works, so I asked Jell-O. The explanation I got doesn't really help clarify things too much, but sounds very cool.

"In chemistry, this is what's called a 'non-Newtonian fluid,'" said Lynne Galia, spokeswoman for Kraft Heinz, which owns Jell-O. "The way the slime flows and moves in your hands depends on the amount of force you use." It is this unique characteristic of being able to move quickly back and forth between a solid and a liquid state that makes slime so fun to play with, she said. 

The slime Jell-O makes is not just play slime, however — it's edible slime. Of course, it has no real nutritional value: It's mostly just food starch, sugar, gelatin and artificial flavors and colors. If you do choose to treat this questionable substance as a food product, you'll find a confusing range of textures. It's gloopy, but tastes powdery. The lime flavor is sort of like crushed SweeTarts. The strawberry flavor reminded me of my childhood, but not for the reason you might expect: It tasted like pink liquid amoxicillin. Yes, the ear-infection medicine. The best-tasting medicine, maybe — but still, medicine. I loved the flavor of that sickly sweet bubble gum liquid when I was a kid and I was both alarmed and weirdly happy to be reminded of it when I dribbled a hunk of slime into my mouth.

I did not eat a lot of slime, because it doesn't taste as good as other candies out there, and I can't imagine what large quantities of it would do to your stomach. However, I played with the slime for way longer than my professional duties required. I mashed it up and dribbled it out of my fists and generally acted like I was 7 years old again. Now I get why kids love slime so much!