Space Putty

What marvellous stuff Space Putty is. You can roll it up and bounce it like a ball, but if you leave it sitting for a while it'll melt back down into a puddle.

Apparently this stuff has its origins back in the Second World War, when American scientists were searching for rubber alternatives. This stuff really wouldn't make a great tyre or shoe sole, but it is fun to fiddle with.

You can roll it out into a long rope, plait it, twist it and squidge it back together again, but unlike something like plasticine, you won't be able to make long lasting models out of it. That intriguing tendency to 'melt' means that you'd come back to find your artistic works of art lying in around in blobs. But then that's part of its charm.

My favourite activity at the moment is to fold the putty to trap the air, then pop the air pockets like a kind of endlessly flexible bubble wrap! All this and metallic silver too, so it looks like a molten metal. Squish it, stretch it, snap it, then put it back in its pot.

Space Putty - £4.99 from ShinyShack.com