Those Laundry Detergent "Pods" ...

[arbilab]

Pods are for users who want to 'toss and go'. Who don't know how to, or don't want to be bothered, matching surfactancy to soil. Like rugs have virtually no fat loading so they foam forever with one pod. While work clothes may not come clean with 2 or even 3.

What we have here is a product result of a focus group, where a corporation gathers the stupidest people they can find and asks them what they want in a product. The answer is always the same, "we don't want to have to think about it". As if they could if they wanted to.

 

[NYCWriter]

Rick ...

... BINGO!!!

 

[washman]

My sentiments exactly

see my earlier post on this rather dubious marketing scheme.

 

[frontloaderfan]

I'd like to add to what Rick said: I think it is also laziness that is being catered to here. He's right. Many do not want to have to think about how to solve a problem or how best to do something as simple as dosing detergents (I myself have been guilty of this). Only thing is, letting P&G decide how much detergent I use was leading to my clothes still having soap in them after what seemed like endless rinsing so I had to change my ways...

 

[arbilab]

Rude of me to infer that people I don't even know are 'stupid'. But product design by focus group is a hotbutton for me. I've never seen it serve good purpose to the enduser, only to the marketer.

 

[iheartmaytag]

Tide Pods

I bought a sample pack. Tried them on the five loads. They didn't do badly, I just don't think I would buy again. I just prefer to be able to dose according to the load.

 

[washman]

No Rickb you are not being rude

rather you are calling it out for what it is and I wholeheartedly agree with you.

The whole "auto" thing trend has gotten way out of hand. We're turning into a nation of mindless dolts, unable to figure out even the simplest challenges. This "pod" thing is ludicrous to the extreme. What happens when you have a smaller load? Does the pod overdose? Or perhaps an extremely dirty load? Does the pod underdose?

Are we sooooo strapped for time these days that we can't take 5 seconds to measure and add detergent be it liquid or powder?

Personally I hope this disappears into never never land.

 

[frontloaderfan]

As much as I hate to admit it....

we here ARE a minority. Not everyone is as "into" laundry and white goods as we here are. To most it is an odious chore, a necessary evil. The average person on the street just wants to throw the clothes into machine XYZ and have them clean as quickly as possible, no fuss no muss.
I'm sure pods (or whatever replaces them) will be around from now on because there is never a shortage of lazy housewives (it would seem that there are more and more of them as the "Barbie princesses" get older and become adults) and college students who just want clean clothes.

 

[washman]

And an even smaller minority

are those that, for reasons stated in other threads, STILL believe that laundry requires plenty of water, good rollover, and warm, if not HOT water to do a good job.

Throw in a retro desire for straightforward, proven mechanical controls and I put the percentages at less than .0003% of the population. Maybe even less.

 

[logixx]

I agree with Ryan

Besides, if you have ever been to a laundromat that does't have top loaders (which would include practically very laundromat in Europe) you will see that many people seem to have terrible problems not to pour liquids or powders over the entire detergent drawer. Every single time I had to use the Speed Queen FL at my dorm back in '06, I had to wash the drawer in the sink under hot water. Fabric softener and detergent everywhere. The Maytags at another dorm were even worse because one coulnd't remove the deteregent tray at all.

Alex

 

[arbilab]

Ah! Just remembered another reason I hate pods. To make room for them on the shelf, all Tide HE powders were done away with. Now there is only foamy powder, pods, and HE is relegated to liquid which I don't cotton to, experience with it has been very poor.

 

[launderess]

Liquid detergents

Solved the problem long ago of mucky dispensers by using the dosage ball from Ariel Excel gel. Works a treat though have to wait when using the AEG for it to finish it's drain, fill, sense load, then start wash business.

Quite honestly like liquids for some loads such as dress shirts and bed linens that aren't very deeply soiled. What soils they do have are often right up liquid detergent's street, oils, fats, and so forth.

 

[frontloaderfan]

I went to Walmart yesterday looking for Woolite to wash my LL Bean wool socks with. Walmart usually has the best selection of detergents in town. Almost an entire aisle of laundry products was liquids or pods. I looked for Purex powder because it is a Henkel product and found in the lonely four foot section of shelving in the entire detergent aisle where the powders were, a single box of Purex powder detergent. Everything else is liquid or pods.

 

[MrX]

That tends to happen here with Finish dishwasher products.

Endless versions of Finish occupying 75% of the shelf space and then the rest has P&G Fairy and Unilever Sun and a couple of in-store brands.

For laundry detergents P&G and Unilever compete usually fairly 50:50 although you can see they're both trying to push liquids, gels and pods and sort of leaving the powder products to languish on the lower shelves.

We've actually a bit of a duopoly on laundry products here though. Henkel and Colgate-Palmolive do not feature at all.

I would like to see more variety and definitely would like to see Henkel's range on the shelves.

The breakdown is like this:

Unilever: Persil & Surf in every format you can think of and umpteen varieties.
P&G: Ariel and Daz in every format you can think of and umpteen varieties.
Store brands: In every format you can think of and umpteen varieties.

Then you've P&G Fairy and Unilever Persil Non-Bio aimed at baby care / sensitive skin. Again, in all formats.

Softeners: endless 'flavours' of Comfort (Unilever) and Lenor (P&G) and store brands.

Then you've specialist products which are usually Woolite, Persil delicates and a few others and store brands.

Basically just unilever and P&G over and over again.

 

[launderess]

Colgate-Palmolive

IIRC at least far as USA is concerned sold off their laundry products and or licenses a few years ago.

 

[rolls_rapide]

My local mainstream supermarkets seem to stock dishwasher detergents as:

Umpteen versions of Reckitt Benckiser's Finish, in various flavours;
Almost a similar variety of P&G's Fairy, in several fragrances;
Store brands in several sizes.
Occasionally, Unilever's Persil Dishwasher pods.

Discount stores seem to have Fairy, own brands and Persil dishwasher pods with reasonable availability - usually with quite a saving over mainstream shops.

Mainstream supermarkets have laundry detergents as:
Bold, Daz and Surf in a million flavours.
Ariel and Persil in another million formats.

Lenor and Comfort fabric conditioners seem to occupy another a million shelf spaces.

 

[logixx]

Dosage balls

Aren't popular in the US, right? I haven't seen one on the many bottles of liquid detergents at Target.

 

[launderess]

Cannot recall a single American laundry detergent that sold/used dosage balls or equally similar devices. Then again we've gone straight from concentrated liquids to pods without stopping for gel detergents.

 

[MrX]

We've always had dosing balls for liquids.

The early ones were about the size of a tennis ball and a lot louder!

Unilever had a clear, soft plastic one for Persil liquid (not concentrated) which was a lot less noisy.
The current Persil Small and Might liquid comes with a similar idea in a much smaller format.

The liquid's not a gel. You pour it into the small dosing device and put it straight into the wash.
No mess, no measuring lids, no gunk down the bottle.

I've found the gels quite pointless to be perfectly honest. A concentrated liquid's a lot more flexible.

The pods pre-date the gels in Europe by about 10 years btw.

 

[paulc]

When Persil liquid (Unilever) first came out in the UK you used the caps as the dosing ball, that made a hell of a noise.

I think with the US traditionally using T/L machines dosing balls for liquid would not be required, even with F/L becoming more common the US, machines have dispensers which support liquid detergent without the use of a dosing device