Bogus Commercials #1: Wow... what a Sham

This has to be the worst commercial currently running. To start off, the guy pushing it acts like a bastard and tries to put on no front that he is not.

Next is the obvious lie in one of the tests. He pour about a can of coke onto a peice of carpet and you can see it pool underneath. He then uses it to soak it up and shows an almost dry area underneather. However, it is obvious that there is a cut here and most of the cola is already gone as there is no longer a pool of liquid around the carpet as there was before. So, we have blatant lying or misleading, but I think it is a straight lie.

We then have the "testimonials" where "normal" people talk about how good they are after buying them at an outdoor market. However, these "normal" people give comments that are way too close to tags for the product for them to be real in the slightest.

Back to the first point, every time I see this commercial, I get the strong urge to punch this guy in the face. He's like a modern day snake oil salesman.



However, I'm willing to at least be open to the fact that the product could work, so I looked up a review on YouTube. In this video, we find out that one of the mini towels, which is still about 2 feet by 2 feet is not able to come close to retaining half a bottle of water or 1/4 liter as there is still a large amount of water remainig. They also claim in the commercial that it doesn't drip, but this one did massively. Maybe it doesn't drip until a certain point, but that's the same with most rags. As an odd side effect, the smaller blue towel also managed to turn the water yellow. Who knows if this will leave a stain on the surface or not.

So, next he empties an entire 1/2 liter bottle of water into a bowl and tests the larger version of the Shamwow to see if it can soak up the entire amount. The large towel is able to do this easily.

So, the final test is pouring a little water out onto his actual carpet. He lays the towel on the carpet and it gets a good bit of the water. He then pats it down and gets a little more. He can't tell if any remains underneath, but the carpet is still moist. So, this one is inconclusive as it did soak up water, but left the carpet damp with unknown ammounts below the surface.

He also stated that despite what the commercial states, you cannot use detergent or dry clean it, so you have to let it air dry.

Overall, this just appears to be a somewhat above average towel with some benifits and some drawbacks. For the 19.99 price, its still not a large amount, but its not the miracle sponge/towel it claims to be.