Review
"Dry your freshly-polished nails with Pam. Kill garden slugs with Miller High Life. Scrub your toilet with Tang. Clean your wallpaper with Wonder Bread. Remove gum from your hair with Miracle Whip -- then wash it with Reddi-Whip. This wild and wacky compendium features hundreds of alternative uses for your favorite store-bought products. And save room for Jell-O -- use it to dye your kids hair!" --
Entertainment Report, April 17, 1998"The book organizes material from Green's earlier books by use instead of by product and includes hundreds more uses." --
Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette, April 23, 1998"The wizard of weird uses for brand-name products.... To Green, the astounding uses people have found for household products are a tribute to American ingenuity. But he does more than simply list unusual, practical uses for everyday products. He also provides tons of little-known factoids about products, debunking rumors along the way." --
Pam Noles, Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1999"While all the uses are offbeat, the vast majority make sense, mainly to help the beleaguered householder.... The chapter on Insects and Pests is especially useful, partly because Green's ideas can work and the products used are in most bathrooms and kitchens... One of the best chapters is on Workshop and Repairs, because it covers things that handymen would like to know.... It is a great book to pick up and find something to solve a problem that you might just be having right now. Green spices up his book with sidebars and short features on such things as how various brand names got their names, 'What Exactly Is Epsom Salt?' 'The Stories Behind the Logos, 'Honey Never Spoils,' and other marvelous tidbits of useless information." --
Peter C. Hotton, The Boston Sunday Globe, May 17, 1998
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
But First, A Word from Our SponsorI am constantly asked how I come up with all of these unusual ways to use brand-name products. The answer is simple. I don't. Upstanding Americans just like you are constantly discovering extraordinary ways to use ordinary brand-name products they have around the house. They might accidentally discover that Worcestershire Sauce shines brass. They may polish silverware with Colgate Toothpaste.
Or they may figure out that Tidy Cat litter provides outstanding traction for cars stuck in snow. Astounded by their own ingenuity, they write enthusiastic letters to the manufacturers to share their discoveries. In return, they receive polite thank you letters, explaining that the companies plan to continue marketing Worcestershire Sauce as a condiment, Colgate as a toothpaste, and Tidy Cat as a cat box litter. If they're lucky, they'll also get a coupon for fifty cents off their next purchase. The companies do keep all these creative suggestion! s on file, often compiling lists of the alternative uses, which are then filed away, never to see the light of day again. The companies should kiss the ground that their innovative, think-outside-the box customers walk on. After all, polishing silverware uses up a lot more toothpaste than simply brushing your teeth does. Instead, hundreds of amazing uses for well-known products are foolishly kept secret from the American public.
So I contact the companies to obtain these secret lists. To me, it's like opening up the CIA's files. I also lock myself in the library for days at a time to research kitchen remedies, household hints, and folklore medicines. Then I test them all out at home. They're not only fun, but they actually work. The result is -- aside from a wild mess in my garage -- this encyclopedia of hundreds of outrageous, economical, environmental, and convenient uses for the hundreds of products you probably have in your kitchen, bathroom, and workshop right now. It a! ll adds up to a remarkable tribute to American ingenuity -- and my wife's patience.
