Peter wrote to me:

"i was wondering who came up with the idea of the triger phrase for the slime i dont know.  the 2nd thing i was
wondering was what the slime tasted like"

Peter, you have opened the slimy can of worms, my friend.  First: the answers.  Roger Price, I am almost positive, came up with...well...you know the phrase.  This has the feel of classic Roger Price, but I invite anyone who has different intelligence on this one to chime in.  

What I do recall is that the idea behind it was a kind of a satire on educational television, and on how the kids on those shows were such smarmy know-it-alls.  I refer not to any of the quality educational TV we see today but rather to some classic 70's Canadian kids TV like a show called "Circle Square" which was beyond tolerable.  So the idea on YCDTOTV was to immediately and in the most disgusting way possible, punish the kid who actually didn't know.  How dare they not know!

The evolution of the recipe is a whole other story.  As I recall, it took a while to bring the local Ottawa crew around to the idea of even working on the show: I think they thought it was, well, kind of disgusting.  And the first slime recipes reflected a kind of experimentation that makes me kind of shudder when I think about it now.

For some time, there seemed to be a lot of oats in there.  Delicious fibrous flavour, but REALLY hard to get out of one's hair.  To make it easier to wash out, sooap was then added...really, really bad taste.

For some time I seem to recall there being a distinctly salty flavour.  I'm not sure I really want to think about why this might be.

and here is the threat I live with every day:


Yes!  It is slime, and it lives in my fridge; I am particularly afraid of the one on the left, which has, somehow, turned blue.  Clearly this is why I am to this day such a know it all.