Remember November: Perkins Paste

Three items were compulsory in an Australian primary school pencil case in the late 1980s. 1) HB pencils. Generally red-coloured with a black end; 2) Erasers. Generally dingy green, with tapered ends, that smelled of fire when you scrubbed them too hard against paper; and 3) A tub of Perkins Paste, a delightfully clumpy sort-of glue, best known for its bright pink containers, white lids, and completely impractical flat stick applicator.

Sadly a Google image search could only turn up the label:

The apex of my Perkins Paste use was in Year 3, in Mrs Simmonds' class. Mrs Simmonds always seemed to like me, giving me A marks for many of my finer social studies or English projects. Of course, such projects - generally mounted on posterboard paper - required a decent amount of Perkins pasting. Mrs Simmonds then retired, but came back for a visit when I was in Year 7. She had no recollection of me at all, and by then I had no Perkins Pasted boards filled with detailed descriptions of the planets to jog her memory.

Sadly even I can no longer remember the smell of Perkins Paste, but I do recall it being far more palatable than the chemical scent of Clag, the big-bottomed gluepot that took over adhesive duties in my later primary years. Certainly daring classmates to eat Perkins Paste was a regular event, even a tad enjoyable. But you wouldn't eat Clag. No, not unless the dare involved a LOT of money. Fifty cents to a dollar, at least.