So there's been a pair on interesting discussions on regarding the colours of gunge and the colours of slime.
Whats really peaked my curiosity here is quite a few replies suggest gunge and slime in fact have a distinct difference. Up until this point I've always assumed them to be fully interchangeable and both representative of the exact same thing (namely that gloopy fun stuff I like wear on a night in).

So in leu of a practical demonstration in which I thoroughly 'test' the merits of both, what IS (in your opinion) the differences between the two?

Honestly, it's the same difference as "chips" and "crisps". "Gunge" is a word that us uncultured degenerates in the colonies refer to as "English English".

But as WAMmers/sploshers usually it comes down to consistency. Most will argue that slime is thicker and clumpier, and that gunge is thinner and more watery.

I have always gone with:
Gunge being something like custard, the molecular bonds like starch being random so end up with a thick liquid.
Slime being more like cellulose, molecules in a line giving strand/stretch like properties.
Also, gunge is sticky while slime is slippery.

I don't know if ths is accurate or just in my mind.

I've always thought that gunge was the British, NHP-style stuff that's more - how do I describe it - chemical? Like natrosol or whatever. And slime is something made of a fairly specific range of foods: oatmeal, cream of wheat, pudding, applesauce, cake batter, etc. Basically anything used on [all those shows it's verboten to acknowledge exist]. Personally, I love slime and usually can't stand gunge.

However, somewhere in the early-mid 2000s they merged. Nick started using British style gunge as their slime, like in the 2012 Figure It Out reboot, and it was all downhill from there.

I used to think that "gunge" was a catch all term for anything you'd use to pour over something, from the bright powder gunge used on TV shows to foodstuffs like custard or cool whip. Whereas "slime" is specifically the powder gunge, and specifically when it's made thinner and runnier. If the powder stuff is being referred to as gunge it should be thick enough to be opaque, whereas slime would be more translucent.

Gunge = colored water with a thickener. Slower viscosity.

Slime = chunkier and nasty. Faster viscosity then gunge.

As mentioned before Nick got cheap and started using "gunge" as an imposter for slime.

this is my interpretation too. Slime specifically as a substance of polymer chains sliding against eachother, with more viscous and stringy/stretchy properties as a result.

I think Kelsey needs to test both of them for us and report back her scientific findings!

Well, Gunge is a thinner, watery, semi-translucent liquid-based substance, whereas Slime is a thicker, lumpier, indeterminable food-based substance.

Origin-wise, Gunge was used as an embarrassing and inconvenient consequence, whereas Slime was used as a humiliating and disgusting punishment. And if you don't understand the (MASSIVE) difference between those two intentions, that's also totally fine, because as long as you enjoy what you're getting off to, it doesn't matter how it's defined by anyone else (or it's history)

Pictures attaches to clear up any confusion.

It never occurred to me how they're sort of polar opposites from a chemistry standpoint!

Gunge is "water + a thickening agent", whereas slime is "solids + a thinning agent"


1000% BULLSEYE

This sounds like something which should be in the wiki.

For me, gunge has always been the thicker, nastier (fun) stuff. But that may just be because I'm a Brit.
Surely slime is, well... slimy

What's the difference between British "biscuits" and American "cookies" ?

We definitely are NOT joking lol.

There's huge difference between Slime and Gunge, just like there's a huge difference between Slime and Pies, or Slime and Mud, or Slime and Water, despite all of them falling under the "Wet and Messy" umbrella.

Although we're mostly discussing the technical differences in this thread, I think a better entry point for understanding why there's such a big difference between them to most people would be looking at their origins (and as a result, our origins with them as a fetish).

SLIME is an American thing, developed by Nickelodeon, as a means to humiliate whoever it was dumped on (from above). It was intended to be a gross punishment, and it's inception came from "potty humor" (the first slimings on YCDTOTV were literally accompanied by a toilet flushing sound effect). It's triggered by uttering a specific phrase, meaning (presumably) anyone could be slimed at anytime if they accidentally said the wrong phrase (nervous anxiety "oh no" implications).

GUNGE is a British thing, developed by the BBC, as a means to penalize whoever was dropped in it (from below) It was intended to be a humorous penalty, and it's inception came from "slapstick humor" (the first gungings on TISWAS were literally escalations of the water and pie gag"). It's triggered by losing a contest or as a forfeit, meaning (presumably) the person consented to the possibility of being gunged and is now a deserving target (Good sport comeuppance "ha ha" implications)

And while it's totally fine if none of this matters to you (or anyone else) in terms of what you like and what gets you off, I do think there's value in the discussion. From a business standpoint, as a producer, you may be turning away a large portion of your potential customer-base on a video due to not understanding these differences.

For instance, I LOVE the work you guys do at Messyworld. I love your models. I love how much effort goes into your productions and sets and devices. I looooooooooove the concepts and storylines you guys develop for your videos. ...and I rarely buy any of them because I have zero interest in gunge. It just does nothing for me,

Now if you guys LOVE gunge, then that's awesome, and you shouldn't give a shit that me and other slime-fans aren't buying your videos because of they only use gunge. You should keep making what YOU love to see, and continue catering to the (large) audience that also loves what you love (gunge).

However, if it doesn't matter one way or the other to you between slime and gunge, then it's probably worth considering switching it up occasionally and opening up your business to the (also large) audience of us slime pervs.

That said, I feel somewhat like a hypocrite suggesting the latter, because as a producer, I basically am doing the opposite of that . I.E, you'll never see me make a gunge video, cause I'm solely making content based on my fantasies (which all involve slime, slime, and more slime), and not making them with business interests in mind.

So while I personally would kill 10 strangers to see Bad Dolly/Messyworld Lisa get a proper green sliming, I absolutely understand (and even respect), if that never happens, because slime just doesn't do it for you guys over there

That is like asking, what is the difference between a Buffalo and a Bison (you can't wash your hands in a buffalo).

Seriously, it largely depends on what side of the Atlantic you live on -- Americans use the term Slime and not Gunge, while Europeans use the term Gunge.

FYI the chemical composition of slime that was first used in the 1979 movie "Aiien" and later in movies like "Ghostbusters" is called methylcellulose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_cellulose

Slime has no color in it's natural form (the Japanese call it "lotion fetish"). . All the colors you see are created by mixing in various food coloring dyes.

Putting it simply....all slime is methylcellulose...but gunge can include many other substances that are not methylcellulose ...e.g. chocolate, pudding etc,

So....you can be gunged with slime.....but you cannot be slimed with non methylcellulose gunge.

Also....most non methylcellulose gunge sustances are edible....but methylcellulose slime is not intended to be edible, unless you are constipated because methylcellulose is also used in laxative products. Also, methylcellulose is used for making sex products like KY Jelly, and Gunge is not.

From a Producers budget and production point of view, Slime is expensive to buy the methyl powder, has to specially ordered and can be troublesome to mix it without getting lumps. Gunge is as cheap as chips and very easy to make because you can buy many food products at your local supermarket to use in gunging scenes.

Not to be that asshole....but... YCDTOTV slime (Feb, 1979) predates the slime used in Alien (May, 1979) and Ghostbusters (1984), and the aesthetic reasoning behind slime being a more translucent viscous substance in the latter two was due to creative (Ridley Scott wanted something that shimmered in the low light dark atmosphere of the Nostromo) and budgetary (Effects coordinator George Giordano was tasked with creating a substance that was easy to wash off the cast, and more importantly their wardrobe) reasons.

All this makes complete sense, except that I'm a British person who wants to try getting slimed. (While still enjoying gunge.) Guess I'm just weird ..

And when I say "slimed", I mean "green slimed", of course . . . .

If I can quote the mad real world from Chappelles show real quick...

You know what? I think we need to have a meeting yall

As soon as I saw this thread I'm like...I'll leave this to Kelsey. And girl, you have absolutely NOT let me down! Your explanations with factoids and dates are far better than what I could explain, lol.

They are the same thing, effectively. This is more an example of differences in dialect than in the object it's describing.

While there is a general desire to separate them, Splatter Island uses slime, but my british customers still call it gunge.

Can confirm


screen_name

By the way what are you using in your profile picture ?

Yo no shit though, she became Alec Baldwin in Glengary Glen Ross, came in and gave a straight up seminar that was educated, highly explained, and thorough, said any questions? I didn't think so, then put on black sunglasses while the grand theft auto San Andreas theme started to play as she walked out

I think it's pretty clear when you look at the texture and consistency of what is being poured over them to tell their is a difference, I suspect a lot of the UK people just assumed everything is gunge because our exposure is pretty much just based on UK TV and gunge is the coverall term used there.

To put it simply think of MostWam, a British producer they have both Gunge and Slime as 2 different types of mess, if there wasn't a difference between the 2 things they wouldn't have 2 specific categories, even it's own gameshow JustSlimed.

Little bit of history: The BBC did not originally use the term gunge, that was an ITV thing. The BBC called it "gunk" and the segment at the end of Get Your Own Back where the adult from the losing team was dropped into the enormous vat of goo was known as "The Gunk Dunk".

TISWAS of course never used what we'd now call slime or gunge, they used shaving foam pies and (lots of) buckets of water. There was an ethical issue all through the 70s to the 90s in British TV (all channels) that you shouldn't waste edible food, so while small quantities like a single pie or cake were OK - remembering the time Felicity Kendal poured a jug of custard into her pants - the kind of large volumes needed for TV gungings / slimings had to be made of a non-food item, or at least a not-obviously-food one. One of the production crew for Noel's House Party once said that their gunge was based on cornflour, but they had to add sugar to it so people wouldn't gag if they got it in their mouths. Some years earlier on a different Noel Edmunds show which featured custard-filled-welly-racing as part of a "gotcha", Anthea Turner made a point that the custard was made from out of date packets mixed with "water you got from a bog somewhere", in response to letters people had sent to the BBC after a teaser trailer for it, objecting to seeing food wasted.

The first time I ever heard the word "gunge" used was in an ITV Saturday morning show some years after TISWAS ended, so mid-1980s, where there was a gunge game section and the "mafia boss" character who ran the game told one of the teenage contestants that she was "covered in blue gunge". And while green did feature in TV gungings and slimings here, it was never dominant, rather gunge was usually one or more bright primary colours, partly to contrast with the recipients' outfits and partly because bright and colourful was the standard for light entertainment TV, sombre colours were reserved for serious drama and documentaries. Most people in the UK only got colour TV in the late 70s or early 80s, as the PAL system was developed later than the US NTSC, so the TV channels liked to show off the colour system.

I don't think the term slime was ever used here at all, the stuff in the Alien films (which I once read was added to the first film to "hide the joints in the alien costume" and then became a theme from then on) was referred to as "alien drool" and was claimed to be the same thickening agent that's used in McDonald's milkshakes.

Very interesting to see how US people think of slime, to me the term suggests something thinner and much more watery than gunge, which is usually fairly thick, at least as thick as better quality custard, where as slime to me suggests something that's almost as thin as water, but not quite, peraps more like cooking oil. But I gather in the US context it should be much thicker with lumps in it, as if made from porridge oats or similar?

American continent.. not USA, as you can't do that on television originated in Canada and was later rerun on Nickelodeon in the USA which ended up spinning off its own additional slime-filled content.

I am not a gambler but this could make for an interesting bet or a YT challenge. 2 contestants each with a bowl of slime (i.e. methylcellulose) and a bowl of any typical gunge substance (chocolate, pudding or baked beans). .....3 2 1 go...., and each contestant starts eating their bowl....first one to get up to go to the bathroom is the loser....

I know which person I would bet on, because there definitely is a big difference

Leon has it right, to create 2 different categories of slime vs gunge

Wow! Thank you for all the replies. You guys/girls are amazing!


Blue stuff is MessySupplies MS Gunge (extra thick)
Green stuff around the skirts of my dress is MessySupplies VIVI-Slime Xtreme (mixed a little thicker than recommended)
Dress is an unofficial Princess Belle cosplay

This level of knowledgeable gunge geekery... Im here for it!

I can't be the only one who really wants Kelsey to do a YT series on WAM, dealing with questions like this