plasticine

Plasticine is a kind of clay that never dries out. It usually is a sickly gray-green color, although you can get it in white, and other colors too. It's often used to make models for 3d animation, or for making molds from. It's used heavily in the movie industry. It also is, correct me if I'm wrong, used for stop motion animation.

Marvellous, non-toxic, modelling stuff. Comes in many colours, and can be rolled, balled and shaped to make, pretty much everything (so long as that everything is frail, unstable and liable to droop under hot lighting). Plasticine is one of the quintessential children's 'toys' - a must for any toy box - along with Lego. Famously hard to get out of carpets. Combining colours is great fun for a while - many lovely mottled and swirly effects are possible. After that, though, the stuff just takes on a uniformly brown colour. It is also one of the first really memorable tastes of childhood (putting 'non-toxic' on anything designed to be used by precocious under fives with high reading ages is just an invitation...), along with Crayola Crayons. Plasticine had, for a while, a rival in Play Doh - but it just isn't the same. No mottled swirls, no tufted carpets, and, most importantly, no taste worth speaking of. What a let down.