Not a gimmick--an essential product for bachelors and wearers of Hawaiian shirts
Written: May 18 '05 (Updated May 18 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Really works; removes dye from water.
Cons: A bit pricey at about twenty cents per wash.
The Bottom Line: Shout Color Catcher adsorbs loose dye in washwater, keeping colors pure and bright, earning my recommendation.
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| bkalafut's Full Review: Shout Color Catcher |
The "Hawaiian shirt", with its many colors and areas of contrast, is a launderer's nightmare. A little bit of color in a white area, softening of a yellow or fading of a stark red, and the effect may be all but ruined.
Dyes in most garments are colorfast, but only to a point. Even when washed in cold water, dyes from garments will be carried by the water to, of course, dye other garments. This is one of the effects responsible for the gradual fading and mellowing of garments, the tendency of reds to take on a rust-like hue and for purple to start to look like an earth tone.
Modern detergents claim to help with this problem. That may or may not be true, but if a white garment is washed with colors--or if an Hawaiian shirt is washed with anything--the differences will show. Fed up with losing the bright whites in Hawaiian shirts, I gave Shout's adsorptive "Color Catcher" cloths a try.
I'm usually the first to accuse a home-products giant of selling to people something they not only don't need, but really can't use, from Bath Wands to "scrubbing bubbles" and particolor toothpaste. The Shout Color Catcher cloths, however, are no false innovation.
I've been adding one cloth to each color load for a while now. They usually come out with some of the garment color on them--especially when washing new shirts or jeans. (Jeans, by the way, are pigmented, not dyed, and are a major culprit in color bleeding.) That, of course, is to be expected, but they come out far more dyed than anything else in a similar load, as dark as a white shirt that'd gone through hundreds of such loads. The clothes, on the other hand, come out with less noticeable dye transfer, and those white areas of the Hawaiian shirts stay white and actually get whiter after a few washes as the accumulated dye comes free.
I have to conclude, then, that Shout/Johnson Wax's claims of dye adsorption have some merit and that the Color Catcher, unlike many laundry and household cleaning products, sets out to remedy an actual problem, and actually does the job.
Colors will eventually fade due to loss of dye, exposure to light, and the washing of brightening agents out of the fabric; the Shout Color Catcher dye adsorbing cloths delay this process by remedying one of the major fading processes, that of dye transfer.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
bkalafut
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 in Restaurants & Gourmet |
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Member: Bennett Kalafut
Location: Tucson, AZ, USA
Reviews written: 257
Trusted by: 42 members
About Me:
Stretching single molecules for fun and profit.
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