on Television" initiated a practice of dumping a substance called "slime" on its child characters whenever they were at a loss for how to please their adult producer, who had, according to the back story of the program, hired the kids in violation of child labor laws because adults would have been too expensive. Whenever the kids fail, they get slimed.
Nickelodeon executives seemed to understand the semiotics of slime, and the network's Creative Director mused to The Wall Street Journal that the substance "became a symbol of the solidarity of oppressed kids. It's tough to be a kid in the adult world." When Mattel teamed up with Nickelodeon to market the product, they found out how much kids apparently agreed with this assessment.
The righteous indignation symbolized by Slime and confirmed by its huge sales was not to mark
