Following on from my earlier post, I sent an email to Bostik regarding their claim that Blu-Tack has “1000s of uses”. Actually, I didn’t email them, as I couldn’t find an email address on their website, so instead I filled out the form on their Contact Us page.
This was the message I wrote:
Hallo,
According to your packaging, Blu-Tack has “1000s of uses”. Having looked at your website, in particular the “Anything you can imagine” page, I have managed to piece together a list of thirty-nine individual uses for Blu-Tack. You don’t need me to tell you this falls some way short of your bold claim. Please can you send me a list of at least 1,969 additional uses for Blu-Tack.Thank you in anticipation,
James Ward
It was just a short message, I understand they must be busy people and so didn’t want to waste their time. They’ve got work to do, they have commitments. As I’m sure you know, adhesives and sealants are a very dynamic technological field. I didn’t want to distract them from their efforts designing adhesives and sealants capable of achieving increasingly higher performance, versatility, cost-effectiveness, and in building into their adhesives additional functional properties besides the mere ability to bond together two different substrates. We’re talking about Blu-Tack here, this is important work. They recently developed Blu-Tack which is actually yellow. I don’t want to stand in the way of innovations like this.
Today, I received a reply from Bostik:
Thank you for your Email regarding Bostik Blu-Tack® and thousands of uses.
We don’t have a list of all the uses of Bostik Blu-tack® as the list could be endless. Bostik Blu-tack® has been around now for over thirty years and we still receive letters from people about the product and other uses they have found for the product.
Kind regards
Technical Team
This is far from satisfactory.
What they are apparently suggesting is that far from only having “1000s of uses”, there is, in fact, potentially an infinite amount of uses for Blu-Tack. And yet, even after looking at their website, I have only been able to find 41 uses for Blu-Tack – since I sent the original email, I have added two to the list; stabilising pieces on a game board (thank you Alex S) and for use in the production of low-budget stop-motion films.
If, as they claim, they have over thirty years’ worth of letters from members of the public suggesting potential uses for Blu-Tack, why are they keeping this information private? Why aren’t they sharing it with everyone, so we can all benefit?
I’m considering submitting a Freedom of Information request so that this list is made public.
JAMES WARD: I LIKE BORING THINGS 
Blu-tack stops my vertical letterbox from flapping about.
That’s sort of a variation on the idea of securing a loose hinge, but I’ll add it to the list anyway.
When I was a student, I used to employ a large blob of blu-tack to keep my stud earrings and their butterflies on. I realise now that this was gross, but you should have seen some of the people I was sleeping with then.
That is quite gross, yes.
‘I’m considering submitting a Freedom of Information request so that this list is made public.’
I would be willing to contribute towards the cost of this.
How much does it cost? Do I need to set up a fighting fund?
Sadly, the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to a private company.
You should ask them why they stopped making Buddies. Assuming it was Bostik who made Buddies, and they stopped making Buddies.
If you had enough Blu-Tack, I would have thought you could use it to bludgeon a mouse to death.
Tell them you’re writing a book about Blu-Tack and I bet they’ll fall over themselves trying to help.
PS my use is to put underneath speakers on their speaker stands to isolate from vibration.
The trouble is that no-one would ever write a book about Blu-Tack because no-one would ever read a book about Blu-Tack, except for me.
Speakers on speaker stands has already been counted.
Are you sure you want to isolate them from vibration? Surely you want to insulate them from vibration?
I once knew a girl who would chew blutack if she ran out of chewing gum… disgusting but true, and a new use!
Also, there is the hilarious practical joke involving blu-tacking someone’s cup to their saucer, and watching chaos ensure.
ooh also, could be used to get hard to reach dirt out from under your nails. I am full of these.
I made a 1/10th scale blu tac sculpture of swamp thing’s head at work once.
You can also pretend to be Space Commander Travis from Blake’s 7 by utilising a blu tac eyepatch.
Stretching blu tac out to breaking oint makes great haloween cobwebs.
And if we are talking about putty rubbers (surely a close cousin of blue tac), there were a few middle aged ladies in my ary class who refused to draw the penises of the life models, and just left a big gap between the legs, so when they went on break I used to make big dongs out of my putty rubber and stick them to their drawings.
We use a bit to keep the broken battery cover on our remote. Does that count?
Also: a moustache (removable); chewing gum; fake bogey; a pencil (freeze to allow sharpening); earrings; shoelaces (allow freedom for diurnal thermal expansion); double glazing sealant; cake decoration (decorative only, obviously)…
I could go on, but you get the idea. I’d be very surprised if the Bostik Dossier did not contain items along these lines.
Keep up the good work.
Oh! Keeping hens’ beaks closed.
I use it as an incense stick holder.
I seem to remember that you could use a big ball and press it firmly to a newsprint/comic which would transfer the image to the blu-tac and then you could transfer this image to a fresh piece of paper. So I’m suggesting a kind of transfer/tracing function.