Category:Seccotine

A Hornby "Seccotine" wagon from 1925. "Seccotine Sticks Everything" [image info]

A "Seccotine" advert from the 1930s [image info]

1963: "For every handyman it must be Seccotine [image info]

There are some products that are sorely missed, where you'll often hear the people who used them complaining that the modern replacements simply aren't as good.

Seccotine is not in that category.

History

Intensely advertised in Britain in the early Twentieth Century, Seccotine's adverts ("As strong as iron!") were a testament to what one could get away with before the Advertising Standards Authority forced manufacturers to write adverts that actually reflected what their products were capable of.

What the ads didn't tell you was that Seccotine was, basically, fish glue. Before synthetics took over, adhesives tended were natural in origin, with "gums" coming from plants, and "glues" usually made by boiling down animal carcases and leftovers -- skins, bones and trotters -- until a gelatinous protein-ey gunk rose to the surface to be scooped up and collected. The clear, odorless higher-grade goo was sold on to food manufacturers as gelatine for jellies, and the non-food-grade residue was sold to glue manufacturers.

At this time there was not yet a large market for dedicated pet food that could use up animal residues that people didn't want to eat, and the fish-processing industry was generating large quantities of "fish bits" that nobody especially wanted. People didn't want fish-derived gelatine for their fruit jellies, because it smelt and tasted fishy.

The solution hit on by Seccotine's Belfast manufacturers in the late C19th was to produce a fish glue and to promote the heck out of it, until it seemed like the best glue ever. While the adverts said that the glue was used by the RAF and the Admiralty, the fact that Seccotine had an unhappy habit of dissolving when exposed to water suggests that perhaps these organisations were using the glue to seal paper envelopes rather than to fix ship and airplane parts, and modelmakers encouraged to use the glue for their model boats were liable to experience a sinking feeling as their freshly launched model craft started to disintegrate shortly after hitting the water.