Within the wealth of hydrocarbon polymers, poly(p-phenylene alkylene)s ("alkarotics") hold a special position since they have been a long forgotten class of hydrophobic polymers. This is somewhat surprising, since the cornerstones of this polymer family cover extremely broad materials properties and the few known representatives attract attention with very favorable characteristics. In the course of this article, four new representatives this family are presented. Whereas poly(p-phenylene octylene) (PPPO; 90 degrees C), poly(p-phenylene hexylene) (PPPH 120 degrees C) and poly(p-phenylene propylene) (PPPPr; 110-130 degrees C) have surprisingly low melting temperatures, the highly crystalline poly(p-phenylene butylene) (PPPB), melting between 200 and 225 degrees C, meets many of the requirements that are essential for a novel, hydrophobic, processable, engineering polymer. In connection with the efforts to tailor the melting temperature; polymers, a simple, semi-empirical methodology estimate melting temperatures of unknown representatives of homologous series of polymers was developed verified. By means of this approach, the melting temperatures of PPPH and PPPB could be predicted with accuracy. In addition, it was shown that the method is not restricted to the present alkarotic polymers, but it seems to have a rather broad range of applications its shown by the successful description of the polymer series, including various liquid-crystalline hydrocarbon polymers and different polyamides.