I love the convenience of bottled water.  Especially when exercising, there's nothing easier than grabbing a bottle and going.  But how to keep the contents cold?  One way is to pre-freeze the bottles - being sure that they don't start out too full or you'll end up with a cracked bottle, a mess in your freezer, or both  Another way is to try to fit regular ice cubes into the bottle, but that's not always very easy. 

Finally, I bought the Ice Tubes Tray.  What a wonderful concept - producing long, thin "tubes" of ice that easily fit into any size bottle!  The tray makes 27 tubes, each approximately 3" long and 3/4" wide.  The tubes slide into every brand of bottled water I've tried.  What a pleasure to just grab a couple of these tubes, slip them into the bottles and know that my drink will be cold and refreshing!

Like I said, the concept is wonderful.

Filling the trays is easy enough.  You simply snap the cover onto the end of the tubes, then fill the tubes with water.  But you need quite a bit of freezer space in order to accommodate this 10" by 4" by 4" tray. 

But the real problem is the removal process.  What a pain!  Unlike other ice cube trays, you can't simply twist and wiggle this tray in order to remove the ice.  The plastic is way too sturdy to allow any sort of wiggling.  I suppose this is a good thing, because at least you know this is a strong, sturdy product that won't become bent out of shape with use.  So how do you remove the ice?   The only thing you can do is remove the cover, then run the entire tray under warm water, until the tubes shrink enough to allow them to slide out.  I don't really have a lot of patience for this method.  I end up using a long handle, such as the end of a wooden spoon to help push the tubes out.  Once they come out, I actually dry off the ones I'm not planning to use right away, then place them in my freezer's ice tray.  I dry them first, because otherwise they'll stick to the other ice cubes in there, since they're wet from having been run under water. 

The removal process is inconvenient enough to cause me not to use this product very often.  I fill it with water, and it sits in my freezer, untouched.  I often wish I could easily grab just one or two tubes but it's just too much of a hassle. 

The concept is good, but on a practical level, this product just doesn't do it for me.

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