Paste Eater
Small children, the Cloudcuckoolander and The Ditz are prone to eating things that should not be eaten. Not necessarily a case of Extreme Omnivore, as it may just be this one specific non-food item that the character consumes. Most common in this category are glue, crayons, soap, and bugs.
- Ralph Wiggum on The Simpsons is known for eating glue, crayons and worms, among other things. One episode also explains the cause of Homer Simpson's dim wit — he inhaled crayons up his nose as a child. In the episode, the crayon stuck in his brain since his childhood is surgically removed, and he becomes very intelligent. However, Homer feels that things just aren't the same, and inhales another crayon to get back to his normal, dumb but likeable self.
- In one issue of the comic, Homer eats paste...at a Parent-Teacher lecture on why it's bad;
Skinner: Listen up, everyone. I want to tell you the sad story of the cousin of a student who a friend of mine taught at a neighboring school in the state just to the east of the state that Springfield is in. He knew a fellow student who ate too much paste just before he was about to give a tuba recital during homecoming. the sound that emitted from the tuba when he pulled his lips free was so intense that it knocked over a ladder, causing a man to fall and grab onto a power line, which produced flying sparks. A passing diesel drove through the sparks and smashed into an oil refinery. A sleeping hobo was awakened by the noise. He was so annoyed at the disruption that he set a fire that burned down the entire town! The moral of this story-- Don't eat paste! Besides, it's made from processed horse hooves!
Homer: Mmm... Processed horse hooves.
- The Ditz Monette in Something*Positive comments, "Putting salted peanuts in Coke is a step up from eating crayons and even I stopped doing that a few years ago." (She's in her early twenties when she says this.)
- Comes up a couple of times in The Penguins of Madagascar. In "Sting Operation", Private spits bubbles and happily declares, "I ate soap!" while under the effects of Phlebotinum-Induced Stupidity. In "All King, No Kingdom", Maurice and Mort accidentally break Julien's throne:
"I'll get the glue."
"To eat?"
"NO!"
- One of Grace's students in Bruce Almighty is constantly eating arts and crafts supplies. She comments that she expects him to poop an ornament any time now.
- Tardy the Turtle from Greg the Bunny has eaten everything from crayons, to drumsticks (the musical kind) to paintballs.
Tardy: "The green ones make me horny!"
- One of Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Verses is titled "Henry King, who Chewed Bits of String, and was Early Cut Off in Dreadful Agonies".
- Truth in Television to people who have pica, a mental disorder where people have an appetite for things which are non-nutritive or base ingredients which it is abnormal to consume, such as crayons, chalk, dirt, ice cubes, flour, pencils or salt.
- The show called My Strange Addiction sometimes deals with people who have this. They had interviewed people who eats glass, cigarette ashes, tissues, chalk, and other things...
- Billy Madison sits next to a boy eating the glue in his first-grade class.
- Cat from the webcomic Cat and Girl is known to eat paint.
- On The Powerpuff Girls, there was a boy in the girls' class named Elmer Sglue who was teased for eating paste. A mosquito tainted by toxic waste fell on the paste he was eating, turning him into a giant glue monster who wreaked havoc on the city.
- In Sluggy Freelance, Zoe does it here. "Pashe ish yummy!"
- In Homestuck, the Wayward Vagabond compulsively eats any green things he can find. Examples include two pieces of green chalk, a chunk of radioactive material, and the Uberbunny's eye.
- Strong Sad from Homestar Runner used to eat colored chalk as a child. "I was sick for a year and almost diiied."