Saturday, November 28, 2009

MIGHTY PUTTY

With all due respect to the late, great, Billy Mays, Mighty Putty (MightyPutty.com) was just not quite as mighty as I had hoped. I must say however that the putty did have a very useful application which saved us from contorting ourselves into knots while trying to adhere a towel rack to the underside of our bathroom mirrored cabinet. Other than that however, the multiple other applications were only moderately successful at best.

I will say that we probably should have read the instructions first. Had we done so we probably would have noticed that we should not have bothered trying to adhere the hot tub pillow back onto the hot tub since there is no indication that Mighty Putty works with plastic or whatever squishy synthetic material the pillow is made of. I however, figured that since the commercial shows that the putty can hold back water from a leaky faucet, it must be able to hold a squishy synthetic pillow to a fiberglass hot tub filled with 103ºF water bubbling away like Hecate’s cauldron. Nonetheless, this was not a proper application for the epoxy and thus, after only a few days, the pillow disengaged from the wall of the tub and I found it floating belly up. The interesting thing however is that the Mighty Putty actually did adhere to the squishy synthetic pillow material, which it was not supposed to do, and disengaged from the fiberglass hot tub, which it was supposed to do.

Before I go on to tell you of the other applications we attempted, let me first begin by telling you that this material is slightly frightening. The putty comes wrapped in plastic within a 3” long tube sealed with a cap.

The putty is multi-layered, green on the outside and white in the middle. You as the user are to open the tube and cut a slice of the green and white material and knead it until the green and white turns into a single white color.

First let me say that the material itself smells like raw sewage. I am not kidding about this. It really does. And there is a warning on the instruction (which I already told you I didn’t read) about skin sensitivity due to some of the ingredients. I do not have sensitive skin, but as I kneaded the Mighty Putty, the skin on my fingers began to peel. Preparing the putty was a very humorous, albeit very smelly experience and who really needs fingertips anyway? The skin peeling didn’t cause any discomfort or pain. That came only from the smell.

So once we had the putty kneaded and prepped, I thought that hanging hooks and rods throughout the bathroom would be the best and most appropriate use for it. I was sick of drilling and since we had the stuff why not give it a shot. We had three bathroom-related applications and one bedroom-related application for the Mighty Putty:
1) Hanging metal towel hooks to a painted wall
2) Hanging metal towel hook to the inside of the fiberglass shower (you know to hang that giant loofah thing)
3) Hanging a metal towel rod to the underside of the metal mirrored cabinet
4) Hanging plastic robe hooks to a wooden door

I started this article off by saying that the towel rod under the mirrored cabinet was a success story. That was a metal to metal application which has held to this day. Aside from the small Mighty Putty fingerprints on the side of the towel rod which are clearly never coming off, I would have to give this application a ringing endorsement.

The other three applications had various levels of success and failure. The metal towel hooks hung to the painted wall stuck for a few weeks. After that however, the weight of the towels tore the hooks off the wall. In Mighty Putty’s defense there is a warning about the bond on painted surfaces only being as strong as the paint bond, and this is definitely true. It would probably be better advise to just say that the product should not be used on painted surfaces because really, how strong is a paint bond?

The metal hook on the fiberglass shower wall was also a highly disappointing failure. I thought for certain that bond would hold with no problem. It was metal to fiberglass and although the application was in a shower, it was not in any direct line of water. It was the far side of the shower. Not a big shower by any means, but the wall was really only subjected to splash and not full-force-water-application. Suffice it to say that after about a week, the hook came off and the Mighty Putty did not. We have attempted to scrape the hardened epoxy off the shower wall with some success and I’m sure some day one of us will get sick of looking at the giant white Mighty Putty booger and finish the job. There is however, the simple matter of trying to release a bond which is resistant to hydrocarbons, ketones, alcohols, esters, halocarbons, aqueous salt solutions and dilute acids and bases without either cutting off a finger or taking half the shower wall out in the process.

The last application, the plastic on the wooden door was a mixture of success and failure. Originally the bond was between the squishy, sticky backing of the plastic hook and the door which, similar to the hot tub situation just didn’t work. Once the squishy, sticky backing came off the hook and it was just the hard plastic and the door, the bond held just fine. This is a little odd since there is paint on the door, but apparently that paint bond is stronger than the bathroom paint bond. Who knew?

We did not attempt all applications of this epoxy because everything we own just didn’t need fixing, so I can’t give you a full spectrum review. I would have liked to try the pipe leak-fix, but that one just scares me a little. I think that anything involving water pressure should be left to the professionals.

All in all though, it’s sort of a mixed bag on this one. I like the product but it is clearly only effective with certain applications. Since it does not state that Mighty Putty bonds plastic, I’m slightly baffled as to why it is still adhering the hooks to the door, but it’s working so why question it. All in all if you wear gloves, hold your breath and make sure there is no paint involved, Mighty Putty will probably do what you need it to.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Just a Little about Me and this Here Blog

So let me tell you a little about myself. OK never mind, you probably don’t care about who I am, only what I do as it relates to this blog. I am the “try-er of all things”. I have spent most of my working career in marketing and business development and I have a background in psychology so naturally I am curious about advertising, what works, what doesn’t work, why it works and whether it’s all just a crock-a designed to make you, the general public feel enough discomfort from not having the item in question that you need to run out immediately and procure it.

I have had the luxury of being able to try many different products not necessarily because I was swayed by advertising to do so, but simply because I wanted to. I found my shampoo by purchasing multiple small bottles of every brand I have ever wanted to try and testing them all. I found my preferred toothpaste, vodka, laundry detergent and face scrub the same way. I do not purchase as my parents do, nor as my friends do. I simply purchase what I think I want to suit some need that I think that I have. I drop products that I think don’t work (or that I think no longer work) and I try other products when I think they will perform better. Sometimes the products succeed and I am hooked for life, and sometimes they fall terribly short. This is what this blog is about.

We are inundated with products in this ever so disposable world of ours, all of which insist that they will make our lives easier, or make us more attractive, or give us more free time, or find us a date, or make our multiple body odors go away. My question has always been, do these products do what they say? Will this really make your teeth whiter, or your lashes longer or your skin smoother after only 14 days? Will this really make you thinner or make you poop without cramping or change your life 1000%? Will this detergent really free you up to spend more time with your children and will these treats make your dog love you more? Maybe. Maybe not.

I am not here to slam any product or product type or brand. I am not the Better Business Bureau or Consumer Reports. I don’t have any formal method of testing or trying anything. I will not tell you what you should or should not purchase. What I will do is share with you my experiences as to what I have purchased. And I can tell you that my experiences are real. I’m not a contractor or a beautician so when I report on cosmetics or tools I can tell you from a real person’s perspective what the skinny is.

All I am is one person who has tried a lot of products and who, (as it so happens) is married to an infomercial junky. As a result I have a great deal of information to reveal about whether products you see actually stack up to their claims. I am not sponsored by anyone and my opinions are unbiased. I will tell you what works and what doesn’t work. I will tell you what the commercials and infomercials don’t tell you. I will tell you what I think. These are only my views and nothing more.