Does anyone know what the use for these is in the game? The couple of walkthroughs I found online didn't seem to have any use for them, but I did find evidence of a very old walkthrough that was up on Mobygames in it's early days and is no longer there (and not on Archive.org either).

I can see some precached text when searching for oil eating microbes and the game by name, and I was able to follow it to a contents page for the walkthrough, but unfortunately I don't see the actually page.

So I'm fairly confident that there is some purpose for them, but I can't determine that as yet.

Thanks

Look, while it's been an extremely long time since I played Superhero League of Hoboken, for help in general with old adventure games (and sometimes other games from the same era), a good source is www.uhs-hints.com. One advantage over standard walkthroughs: you can reveal hints little by little for help with puzzles without getting instantly spoiled.

As for your particular question, I'm pretty sure you will need that item for a later puzzle.

Thanks for the recommendation. I can confirm that the game 100% does not need this item to be completed. If it has a use, it's to get some optional item for extra experience and/or utility.

I just can't figure out what that is anywhere, and I can't find a walkthrough that mentions it outside of a partial mention that you should make sure to take it with you for some future reason.