Mister Steamy Towel Fluff Test

Fluff!
Date of Purchase: 10 September, 2010
Price: $19.99/set of two

Although we have already settled on the “failure” designation for this week’s widget, it may still be useful to highlight some test results. As you might recall from Monday’s post, we came to the conclusion that the Mister Steamy dryer ball may be useful for socks, towels, and sheets. For those of you who might have a strong desire to have fluffy towels in your life (apparently this is a big deal?), this post is for you.

One of the claims made by the Mister Steamy camp is that it will make your towels oh-so-fluffy. They illustrate this claim by showing us a picture of 3 beautiful, fluffy towels beside 3 flat, boring towels – flat towels = dryer alone, fluffed towels = Mister Steamy. Let’s see if we can reproduce such results.

We start with 4 standard brand-new-never-used towels....

4 flat towels, fresh from a store

Then, we throw two of them in the dryer, without the thundering dryer ball. After a 30 minute high-heat cycle, we carefully re-fold them and place them next to our un-dryered* towels.

first two towels on left, dryer only

The results of the dryer-only cycle are clear: more fluff.

The next step is to see if the Mister Steamy produces even more fluff. We place the un-dryered* towels in the dryer with the Mister Steamy (as per instructions, filled with of water) for the same 30 minute high-heat cycle. After 30 minutes of dryer-drumming torment, we place these towels beside the other set for comparison.

left: dryer only...   right:dryer with Mister Steamy

The results are in… Mister Steamy produces virtually zero additional fluff.

One question remains: how did the marketing team for the Mister Steamy achieve their results? Rather than tossing around accusations, we’ll just assume that our test must have been flawed in some way. Unfortunately, the Mister Steamy doesn’t come with a “fluffy towel comparison test – the Mister Steamy way” instruction sheet. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to let us know.

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*un-dryered is a word. We made it up. Don't use it, though. We'll probably get a patent soon. And maybe a copyright/trademark/registration/digital rights management/activation code/treasure map.