Germfree Adolescents

Released in November 1978 on EMI International, Germfree Adolescents was produced by Falcon Stuart, the band's manager, with John Mackenzie Burns as engineer and Andy Pearce as assistant engineer. All twelve songs were written by Poly Styrene. Rudi Thompson played saxophone, and Ted Bunting added saxophone on Identity and The Day the World Turned Day-Glo. The saxophone parts had been written by Lora Logic, who had left the band before the record was made. Logic went on to found Essential Logic.

Five of the twelve songs had already come out on the A and B sides of singles. Jon Savage wrote in Melody Maker that this was an unforgivable proportion, but concluded that it did not detract from the album's playability, and that the songs were built on catchy, deceptively simple riffs, often reminiscent of reggae in their jaunty lilt. Charles Shaar Murray of NME said the record avoided the weaknesses of earlier Spex gigs and records while concentrating on great lyrics, nifty chewns, energy and a winningly knowing innocence. Tim Lott in Record Mirror called it sounds for sophisticated head-bangers. The NME ranked it the ninth best album of 1978, and the album reached number 30 on the UK Albums Chart.

Robert Christgau wrote in The Village Voice in February 1979 that he regretted its absence from American shops, and praised Styrene's cheerfully moralistic nursery rhymes. Pitchfork's Jenn Pelly, reviewing it in 2017, wrote that Poly Styrene told England's Dreaming she wanted the album to be a diary of 1977. Trouser Press called it a masterpiece.

Oh Bondage Up Yours! and Age were left off the original running order. A 1991 reissue added them, and a 2005 CD reissue restored the original order with the singles and two John Peel sessions, recorded on 20 February and 11 June 1978, as bonus tracks.