Whoever said that little girls were neat and clean never actually owned one.

My 2 year-old daughter is far messier than my 5 year-old son ever was. As of this writing, she has accumulated more food remains on her clothing such that if all the ingredients were combined, there would be enough food to feed a 3rd world country. Or host a church potluck.

That said, I was more than glad to test out the new Tide to Go stain stick. My wife usually carries around a crate of Shout Wipes in the diaper bag. And they have always worked exceedingly well. So the Tide to Go Stick had a rather high bar to beat. Let's find out if it hurdled that bar or was clotheslined by it.

What it is
The Tide to Go stain stick looks like a bright orange highlighter. Subtle in its appearances it is not. Pop the cap off and the office supply appearance continues as the tip looks exactly like a white magic marker. To use it simply press down the tip to release the stain fighter on the stain and color it using circular motions. In theory the stain should disappear.

The Test
The test bed consisted of several food chemicals including raspberries, mac and cheese, and finally, chocolate. The latter was an interesting and heavy test. We were at the Drive-in (The last remaining one in Washington) and we gave her a bag of plain M&Ms with the strict instructions of "One at a time". Being a 2-year old she completely disregarded our optional suggestion and before we knew it, she had chocolate dripping out of her mouth and onto her Princess PJs. We stripped off the shirt, wiped off the excess and went to work with the Tide to Go stain stick.

Results:
Mixed. The Tide to Go stick did get rid of most of the stains, but only after a while. The shout wipes always pulled the stain outs immediately. I suspect this is because the Shout cleaner lifts the stain and then the cloth wipes it away. The Tide to Go stick uses only chemicals since there is only the pen tip which doesn't have the wiping action of a cloth.

The raspberries were the most stubborn stain and didn't fully lift out. This is not surprising as the Shout Wipes usually require so much scrubbing that I get a charlie horse. But this is an inherent weakness in the pen form factor. There's no way to really scrub out a stain. The most I can do is scribble at it for a while.

The Good
* It works. The stains were removed as well as expected.
* Doesn't have much in the way of a scent so no dead giveaway that I just spilled Taco Bell Grande on my tie and tried to clean it up.
* Convenient. Fits in a pocket (assuming you don't mind looking like you are carrying on orange highlighter).
* Plenty of cleaning fluid. I've used it several times and haven't run out
* It did not discolor or fade the clothing. I sometimes run into this with Shout Wipes if I scrub too hard.
*Less waste than Shout wipes. With those, you have to throw out the little package and the cloth. With the Tide to go, just pop the cap back on, no waste.
* Easy to pinpoint the stain. If it's a small speck, you can simply touch the affected area. With Shout wipes, you end up feeling like half your body just walked through a carwash.

The Not-So-Good
* Takes a while to work. Sometimes upwards of 20 minutes.
* no indicator as to when the thing is empty. I'm gonna be mad if I spill pea soup on my shirt and find my stain stick is empty.
* Ok, this is the most nitpicky thing you're going to read, but the package was too easy to open. This tells me that lots of stain sticks will be stolen out of their packages and therefore the price will go up. Dumb, I know.

Conclusion: Not a bad product, it worked as expected. But I won't give up my Shout wipes for it.

Full disclosure: The Tide to Go stain stick was provided to me at no charge courtesy of Cindy Pino at DeVries. My review is completely honest as I wouldn't want to stain my reputation by being biased. Har har.

Recommended:
Yes