From contemporary reviews, Charles Shaar Murray of NME praised the album, stating it "neatly avoids the weakness of previous Spex gigs and records (i.e. cacophony, ramshackle playing boosted by road-drill volume) while concentrating on the band's strengths (great lyrics, nifty chewns, energy and a winningly knowing innocence).

"[11] Tim Lott of Record Mirror declared the album to be "sounds for sophisticated head-bangers" and that it was "Bright music, glaring and kitsch as the pinks, greens and yellows that splash the colour.

The sides are programmed symmetrically and sensibly [...] All the songs are built around catchy, deceptively simple riffs, often reminiscent of reggae in their jaunty lilt, and they're done full justice by the band and the production."

[12] Murray also was disappointed by the lack of new material, stating that "three A-sides (the title track, "Identity" and the immortal "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo") and one B-side ("I Am a Poseur") on an album makes for poor value in this man's supermarket.

"[12] Murray commented that "Plastic Bag" was "by no means as excellently realised as it was on the original X-Ray-Spex demo tapes of a year or so back (this allusion is not elitism: I just wish you could have heard that version).

[13] In his February 1979 "Consumer Guide" column in The Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau bemoaned the fact that Germfree Adolescents had not been released in the US and praised Poly Styrene's "cheerfully moralistic nursery rhymes", the songs' strong melodies and the "irresistible color" of the band's "dubiously tuned one-sax horn section".