ShamWow jumps the queue, and Fatty on NPR

The friends I had hoped to entice into participating in the Great Water Taste Test had a change of plans which precluded them from staying overnight, and I’m too good a friend to load them up with seven different kinds of water and then send them out into the night. Also, it turned out that one of them had a real jones to see the ShamWow in action, so we did a little preliminary testing that is going to help me set up the full-on experiment.

Fatty and Obama

But first, a little public service announcement: As we all know, the DC area has gone totally bonkers for the inauguration. I was thrilled to find a friend from my past, Fatty of Fatty’s Custom Tattooz, getting into the spirit of the moment by creating permanent souvenirs of this historic occasion. I was even more thrilled to find him discussing it on NPR’s All Things Considered.

And now back to the ShamWow

Initial observations:

• The smaller blue ShamWow is not, as the kids would say, “all that.” We dipped a fully dry, unused ShamWow into a standard-issue Pyrex measuring cup containing two cups of water. When the ShamWow was removed, 1 1/3 cups remained. Nice, but not stunning.
• The orange ShamWow is more impressive. After dipping it into two cups of water, the cup was empty.

Clearly, this requires more exploration. Things that needs be tested:

• Precisely how much a given ShamWow will hold.
• Whether a used but dry ShamWow holds the same amount of water.
• Whether it actually will suck liquid up through the carpet so that the floor beneath is dry, like they show on the TV.
• Anything else I can think of.