Does It Work: ShamWow

If you watch any late night TV. Chances are you've seen an infomercial for the ShamWow..

It's a super absorbant towel. A box of eight sells for 20 bucks, but in this economy we wanted to make sure you'll get your monies worth.

So consumer advocate Heather Sullivan put the ShamWow to the test in this "Does it Work?'

Heather asked a mom, Carol Owens to test it out.

We bought a box and in it we got 8 ShamWow cloths, four are big, four are little, they come with a 90 day warranty. What we're going to do is compare them to a sponge and a diaper often used for cleaning.

First Carol poured equal puddles of coke on the counter. The diaper picked up most of the spill, the sponge only a little and the ShamWow?

Of the 3, it actually did the best job.

It picked up the spill in one blot. The ad shows the ShamWow to be extremely absorbant.

The ShamWow advertisement claims the product holds 20 times its weight in liquid.

So we poured an inch of water in a dish three times. the sponge didn't absorb much...

The diaper absorbed some of the water... and the ShamWow it took up most of the water.

ShamWow drank the water just like in the commercial. but ShamWow did drip when it was more than saturated... even though the box says it won't. the ad shows a carpet stain test...

The commercial for the ShamWow also claims that it got remove liquid from the bottom side of carpet. “ The other 50%,the color starts to come up, no other towel is going to to that. It acts like a vacuum, virtually dry on the bottom.”

Carol poured coke on a carpet and applied a Shamwow.

That took most of it out on the top, but there's still some left underneath.

Finally we washed a Shamwow in the washer. It held up, Overall...

The towel had carol saying Shamwow.

One upstate viewer sent us this link to a video he put on youtube.
Lee Griffin of Moore says he tested ShamWow and found it does NOT work.
Watch the Video

There are a several home videos of ShamWow tests on Youtube. Some tests show it works, others show it does not.

More YouTube Videos

Is the shamwow more cost effective than paper towels?
The average family can spend 20 dollars a month on paper towels. That’s 240 dollars a year.
You get a box of eight ShamWow's for 20 dollars and can wash and reuse them.
You can find ShamWow's at Walgreens, CVS, Bed, Bath, and Beyond or online Here