Does It Really Do That: Blox

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Is there such a thing as a stain-free life?

With two young daughters and a son on the way, that's something Steffanie Jasper of Crawford Square knows is years away.

"There's always juice or yogurt or something that ends up on the front of them," said Steffanie, "so sometimes you end up getting rid of it or buying it again."

There's a new product that promises to block stains before they begin.

It's called Blox. The infomercial promises: "It's easy to use. All you have to do is drop it in the wash. It's that easy. Just put it in the wash. That's it."

Without Blox, fruit juice stains a little white dress. With Blox, the infomercial shows the stain just rolls away.

Steffanie admits it looks impressive, "if it actually works."

But does it really do that?

Seven-year-old Lauren and 5-and-a-half-year-old Natalie agree to help us find out.

We buy them some inexpensive new clothes. Some clothes we wash in the Blox and some we won't.

Directions say to use Blox right in the washing machine. Just set your machine to the warm cycle and then add four ounces of Blox to the fabric softener dispenser.

Easy enough but right away, Steffanie notices a problem.

It requires four ounces per load. That's a quarter bottle. Considering that there are only 20 ounces in a bottle of Blox and that a bottle of Blox sells for $20. That's expensive. That's $5 a load, but if it saves these clothes from ruin, it could save money in the end.

We wash our clothes and remove our dried clothes and carefully mark them "W" for just washed, "WB" for washed in Blox."

While the girls change, we unload our ammunition - all the stains Blox claims we will no longer have to worry about like fruit juice, ketchup, spaghetti sauce and even chocolate fudge sauce.

Lauren is wearing a shirt not washed in Blox. Natalie is wearing the "Bloxed" shirt.

The girls pour fruit juice down the front of their shirts, but right away, we think Natalie missed her shirt. There isn't a drop on it, but Natalie did every thing just right. When the liquid hits the shirt, it just beads and runs right off.

"It works," said Steffanie.

We check Lauren's shirt. It's horribly stained.

We try again with chocolate milk. First on the unprotected shirt, then on the protected shirt..

The chocolate milk shows a little on the Blox shirt, but it's certainly a difference.

Next we move on to food stains. Blox promises no more spaghetti stains, but here Steffanie doesn't think Blox lives up to its promises.

It doesn't work on spaghetti sauce.

We try ketchup. It does leave a stain.

Liquids and solids are a different story. Liquids work great. It beads up and dances over the fabric. Solid food stains don't seem to work well.

So bottomline: does it really do that? Steffanie has her reservations.

"It's expensive to only get four washes per one bottle. That's pretty expensive," she said.

And although it does do a super job on liquids, when it comes to solids, Natalie said, "I don't think it worked very good when it came to this and ketchup. It didn't work very good."

Steffanie agrees. "I don't think I would buy it. I would give it a thumbs down."