So here I am — on a perfectly normal Saturday — trying to fish a rogue LEGO out from under a decrepit shelf (and yes, I still step on them). I looked over and there was this thing in the dusty shadows. Lumpy. Sticky-looking. Kinda… crunchy? My initial thought: Nice, a dead mouse. But to my surprise, it was Old Floam.
Because that is just what you want to deal with before coffee.
I prodded it with the end of a pencil (standard procedure) and it didn’t budge. Thank God. But it also didn’t really resemble something living. It was this strange, lumpy mass with what looked like tiny seeds or beads pasted all over it. Part moldy, part mystery. I half-expected to see a note from a raccoon that read, “Thanks for the snack storage.”
But no — after about 30 seconds of bewilderment and one sniff of something sort of plasticky, I knew.
I was finding old Floam.
Wait—Remember Floam?
If you’re reading this and you’re under the age of 25, you may be asking yourself what the hell is Floam. Here’s the lowdown: in the ’90s and early 2000s, Nickelodeon pretty much pioneered a way for kids to cause a ruckus and label it creative genius. Floam was this weird, mushy, malleable, neon cheese that was full of miniature foam spheres. Weeds with funny gel-like bodies, like slime gave birth to packing peanuts.
