Hong Kong teen entrepreneurs cash in on slime craze, but why do kids love playing with it in the first place?
Gloopy, glutinous but ultimately gleeful for many, slime has exploded in popularity worldwide over the past year, with some sharp-minded schoolkids making a bit of extra pocket money by selling jars of their own concoctions
The working-class Kowloon district of Sham Shui Po is the go-to place for Hongkongers in search of absolutely anything they’re looking for at affordable prices. Electronics, phone accessories and second-hand knick-knacks are the bread and butter of shopkeepers and hawkers on Apliu Street.
Buttons, beads and other handicraft accessories are there to choose from around the block on Yu Chau Street. But there’s another kind of product that’s now in huge demand in units at the nine-storey Dragon Centre shopping mall. This has become the place to go in Hong Kong for one of the latest crazes among youngsters – a gloopy, glutinous plaything called slime.
Young children and tweens are flocking to tiny cubicle shops on the mall’s seventh floor to buy the stuff.
“About 70 to 80 per cent of the products in our shop are slime-related,” says Bear Chan, store manager at B Bear Company, which rents display locker space to young slime sellers. “We sell slime as well as the products and materials used to make it.”
On a typical weekend, her tiny shop is crowded with groups of children, from eight- and nine-year-olds to 18-year-olds, coming and going with multiple containers of slime in tow.
