Gummy removable adhesive--what is it exactly?

Factual Questions
1

Have you ever bought a gift card (HomeDepot, Barnes&Noble, etc.) which was a plastic card “stuck” to a cardboard backing? When you pull the card off the backing, you see this thin gummy line that was being used as an adhesive of sorts–strong enough to secure the card to the backing, but also easily removable, not only from the plastic card but also the cardboard as well. Just rub it with your thumb (not even your nail) and it slowly rolls off. It is transparent and gummy but not particularly sticky–just enough to do the job.

What is this stuff? Is there a brand name you can buy? Is it available only at specialty shops, or is it more common? I’m helping some friends with a project and they could really come in handy but everyone I ask knows what I’m talking about without having a clue where one might actually buy it.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

2

Try looking for ‘rubber cement’ at an office supply store.

3

I hope this gets answered definitively, because I’m dying to know.

4

It’s called “rubber cement”. Available at office supply, craft, hobby, and Og help us, even Walgreen’s.

5

Maybe rubber cement has changed since the days when I used to do model-building as a kid, but from what I remember, (1) the consistency is completely different, and (2) r.c. actually sticks more permanently. If you applied the “old school” r.c. to the cardboard, there’s no way on earth you can just rub it off gently with your thumb without doing some damage. This stuff is still a bit stringy and goopy (though not liquidy), whereas the r.c. I remember would lose its plasticity pretty quickly.

Maybe you’re right (or maybe there are different types of r.c. available out there), but color me dubious for the moment (though I will keep it in mind if nothing else viable comes up). Thanks!

6

Model cement isn’t the same thing as rubber cement. Model cement is an acetate cement and actually bonds plastics to each other on a molecular level, “welding” them without heat. Rubber cement is actually non-vulcanized rubber dissolved in organic solvents. When the solvents evaporate, the rubber left is sticky, but it’s a self-contained stickiness, so that it’s not likely to rip paper or cardboard when it’s pulled off.

7

I used to work for an advertiser/poster shop that would do some jobs involving application of plastic cards to glossy card stock pieces. For small runs (< 1000 or so), we’d just use regular ol’ Ross rubber cement applied by hand.

However, for big runs, we’d send the job out to be done by machine. I don’t claim to be an expert on the exact adhesive the machnes used, but it didn’t seem to behave too differently from the cheapie rubber cement. I did notice that the machine could lay down a relatively “pretty” strip of adhesive – better than you could do with a brush. I got the impression that the machine’s adhesive was somewhat more viscous that regular rubber cement.

Also, the machine adhesive forms a more cohesive glob of goo when dry. Regular rubber cement seemed more crumbly to me, though still easy to remove, when dry.

8

After a few minutes of googling, I found out that it’s referred to as one of the following:

  1. refugee glue
  2. snot glue or
  3. booger glue.

here’s someone that sells industrial quantities of booger glue. .

Overheard in the backroom of a printshop:

“What do you mean, the snot machines all boogered up?” :smiley:

9

The magazine “Inquest Gamer” refers to this adhesive as “Hobit Snot”. Especially when it talks about its cards, or poly-bagged goodies they supply. I personally have called it that ever since, in any application.

10

It is quite commonly used in the magazine publishing industry for attaching cover mounted gifts; I believe they call it ‘gorilla snot’

11

I thought it was rubber cement,
but it’s snot.

12

:snort: :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks everyone! So the next question is–can you buy fugitive glue for personal use? All of the links and googling I’ve done have yielded paper product service centers that have their own fugitive glue “systems”. My friend went to several craft and hobby shops and they had no idea what that stuff was. Is this type of thing only available on a mass-quantity level?

Oh, and she’s picked up the rubber cement but hasn’t tried it yet.

13

You need Glue Dots!

http://www.gluedots.com/at_home/consumer.shtml

14

I just got a Best Buy gift card yesterday. Unlike the gift cards described in the OP, this was glued to the cardboard backing with some seriously sticky stuff, not the usual snot. When I removed the card from the backing, the cardboard tore off in places and remained glued to the card. The adhesive did not come off the back of the card. The only way I could put the card in my wallet with any hope of getting it out again was to take a wide strip of magazine stock and stick it to the card to provide a buffer between the glue and my wallet. I guess they ran out of snot.

15

I’ll second that. I used to work for a big printing company, and that’s what guys there called it.

16

Fugitive glue.

17

3M sells it (or something very similar) as clear adhesive mounting squares.

18

Ninja’d by Moviemogul four posts and seven years before yours.

19

I was just about to respond to the same effect (and it is actually eight years).

I know **whatdoiknow **probably won’t be back, but why do you not read the thread before posting (might also notice the date as well)?

20

Don’t know the answer to the OP, but since this thread has come up again, here’s an interesting factoid that maybe not everyone knows yet:

This stuff is also used to attach a plastic card to paper – when you get a bank ATM card, or credit card, or store charge card, or plastic card from your HMO, whatever – it’s attached to a piece of paper this way.

It wasn’t always thus. I don’t remember when this changed, but it was within my mid-recent memory, I think.

How it used to be: The paper had some carefully shaped holes in it, positioned at two diagonally opposite corners of the card. The card was placed on the paper there, and the corners poked through those holes. This held the card in place.

At the very bottom of the piece of paper, was a message in quite small type, declaring that something on the page (not clearly specified what) was either Copyright or Trademark (I forget which already) by. . . wait for it . . .

. . . Dianetics ! :smack:

What I had sometimes heard (or was it just an urban legend?) was that Dianetics held the trademark (or copyright or whatever) for the invention of those little holes in just that pattern, for just that purpose. (Sounds like that would have been a trademark, not a copyright.) Or so I had occasionally heard.

So it seems that Dianetics had somehow invented that idea, or otherwise come to control the rights, so that every company that sent out plastic wallet-sized cards had to pay them a royalty or licensing fee or something.

Then, all of a sudden, they all started using this rubbery gluey stuff instead. So I thought, that particular formulation must have been a new invention about then, just for the purpose of not having to kiss Dianetics ass with tribute payments any longer.