Perkins Paste was an Australian brand of adhesive. Although not designed specifically for children, its quick drying, non-toxic formula made it safe for school use. The glue was sold commonly in small, 60-gram,

fuchsia ''Fuchsia'' () is a genus of flowering plants that consists mostly of shrubs or small trees. The first to be scientifically described, '' Fuchsia triphylla'', was discovered on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republi ...

-coloured, cylindrical plastic tubs with white plastic lids that incorporated the flat, spatula-like applicator. The paste was a thick white solid paste, made from boiled potato dextrin.

Company history

Perkins Paste was owned and started by Maurice Bertram Jeffery, a

commercial artist Commercial art is the art of creative services, referring to art created for commercial purposes, primarily advertising. Commercial art uses a variety of platforms (magazines, websites, apps, television, etc.) for viewers with the intent of promo ...

who found himself unemployed during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

. Production began in 1934 at Albion Street,

Surry Hills, New South Wales Surry Hills is an inner-city suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Surry Hills is immediately south-east of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Sydney. Surry Hills is surround ...

and ceased during the 1980s. It became a

cultural icon A cultural icon is a person or an artifact that is identified by members of a culture as representative of that culture. The process of identification is subjective, and "icons" are judged by the extent to which they can be seen as an authentic ...

, akin to

Vegemite Vegemite ( ) is a thick, dark brown Australian food spread made from leftover brewers' yeast extract with various vegetable and spice additives. It was developed by Cyril Callister in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1922. A spread for sandwiches, t ...

or the

Tim Tam Tim Tam is a brand of chocolate biscuit introduced by the Australian biscuit company Arnott's in 1964. It consists of two malted biscuits separated by a light hard chocolate cream filling and coated in a thin layer of textured chocolate. Hi ...

biscuit. Many users of the product recall eating Perkins Paste during their

primary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary e ...

years.

Popular culture

A track calle
'Perkins Paste'
has been recorded by the band Bleeding Jelly Eyes. On 11 March 1993, Perkins Paste was mentioned in the NSW Legislative Assembly during debate on the 'State

Environmental Planning Environmental planning is the process of facilitating decision making to carry out land development with the consideration given to the natural environment, social, political, economic and governance factors and provides a holistic framework to ...

Policy No. 3 - Castlereagh Liquid

Waste Disposal Waste management or waste disposal includes the processes and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes the collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste, together with monitoring ...

Depot'. The then Member for Ermington implied that the then Member for Blacktown had rearranged information contained in

Water Board A water board is a regional or national organisation that has very different functions from one country to another. The functions range from flood control and water resources management at the regional or local level (the Netherlands, Germany), w ...

memoranda: "out with the scissors, out with the Perkins Paste, and out with the truth". In 2003, Perkin's Paste was mentioned in a newspaper report concerning the youth

creative arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

festival 'Noise' in Melbourne. The digital revolution was likened to Perkins Paste as a form of creativity (of DIY, cutting and pasting) available to everyone.

Travel writer The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern period ...

Susan Kurosawa recalled, in a 2007

newspaper article An article or piece is a written work published in a print or electronic medium. It may be for the purpose of propagating news, research results, academic analysis, or debate. News articles A news article discusses current or recent news of eit ...

, her mother's use of Perkins Paste:

I have a photograph of the young Susan, on board the old ''Arcadia'' in the late 1950s, en route from Southampton to Sydney, at an equator-crossing ceremony. I appear to be wearing a hula skirt and a discouragingly small bra made from two segments of a cut-up egg carton. Around my neck is a chain of coloured bath cubes. My hair is a mermaid's tangle of toilet-roll twists and I am holding an upside-down broom as a makeshift trident. I have a vague memory of the terror I felt when my mother set off to make this costume at an on-board creative arts class. What that woman couldn't do with a few rolls of crepe paper, a couple of decommissioned coat-hangers and a pot of Perkins Paste isn't even worth considering.Royal appointment , The Australian
/ref>

t-shirt A T-shirt (also spelled tee shirt), or tee, is a style of fabric shirt named after the T shape of its body and sleeves. Traditionally, it has short sleeves and a round neckline, known as a ''crew neck'', which lacks a collar. T-shirts are general ...

showing the Perkins Paste label was previously available fro
REMO
Australian Urban Culture side-note: Eating small amounts of Perkin's Paste was a "rite of passage" in most Australian Primary Schools during the 1970's.

Notes

{{Reflist Australian brands