Product Review: Tide Stain Release

UPDATE:  Tide responded to this blog.  See their letter at the end.

Here's another unsolicited review.  I received a free sample of Tide Stain Release and some Tide to go with it.  Tide Stain Release comes in little gel packs, like dishwasher detergent.  I've tossed a couple in with my regular laundry, but I haven't paid much attention to them.  Until Kiddo went to summer camp.

Summer camp this year was a week at Camp Habitat, the camp at Creamer's Field.  There's a lot of water and muck at Creamer's Field, and Kiddo came home every day completely happy and soaked, bug-bitten, and thoroughly filthy.  Wednesday evening as I'm looking at his socks I realize I have the perfect trial for the Stain Release.  This one is going to take a lot of pictures, folks (click the pictures to enlarge them).  Here's the before: 

Now these clothes were certainly not new and I didn't expect them to come out looking new. I was looking at two things: the new grass stains on the knees of the jeans and the socks.  The socks in the center are my control; Kiddo wore them Tuesday and they were almost as bad as the socks on the left before I washed them with my regular load (using Arm and Hammer Free and no special treatment, if you're wondering). I decided that the Tide Stain Release should be able to get those nasty socks at least as clean as that pair.

Reading the instructions I see that really heavily stained stuff might require two Stain Release packets, so I give Tide the full benefit and wash the filthy clothes (along with Junior's Tee Ball uniform) with the Tide sample and two Stain Releasers. I washed them in cold water on the longest cycle.

Okay.  Let's skip through the exciting wash and spin cycle.  I did check the stains before I dried, them, and decided since they were old clothes to start with I'd just dry and let you see for yourself.  If I were more concerned I probably would have washed them again. Here's the after pictures.  The socks are in the same order, so the pair in the middle are the control pair.

As you can see, the grass stains are still there, and even the less-soiled socks didn't get as clean as my control pair.  I was really disappointed.  I probably could have done better with a pre-soak of plain old detergent.

Final review of Tide Stain Release In-Wash Booster: don't bother.  On freshly heavily soiled clothes the addition of two Tide Stain Release packs gave no better results than detergent alone.  I'm glad this was a free sample and I didn't pay for the lack of results.  I'll stick with traditional pre-treating.

Tide's Response: I always contact companies when I blog-review their product.  In this case I got an email from Tide just now.  I'm publishing it un-edited (including the font size jumble) for you:

Hello Amy,

Thank you for contacting Tide and sharing your comments.

I apologize the Tide Stain Release didn’t remove the stain and I’m sharing your comments with the rest of the team.  Please be assured this is unusual.  Tide Stain Release is designed to help remove the most common tough stains.  In addition, the liquid can be used to pretreat tough stains. 

Since your satisfaction means a great deal to us, I'm sending compensation by postal mail.  You should receive my letter and replacement coupon that will be good for any Tide Stain Release within the next 2-3 weeks.

Thanks again for writing.

Kathleen

Tide Team