'Quacking' Clean Idea (Toilet Duck Fresh Lime Zest Discs)

Member Name: suehome

Product:	Toilet Duck Fresh Lime Zest Discs
Date:	24/09/09 (181 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cageless and effective cleaner

Disadvantages: Pungent gel difficult to dispense

I really hate 'iffy' toilets. This includes both the unclean variety....... and those which are so heavily charged with either chemical disinfectants or overpowering masking scents. Historically toilet blocks or cleaners were either added to the cistern : slowly generating sludge and gunk or lurked under the rim in a cage arrangement collecting germs and other unpleasant looking growths. As the flu pandemic threatens to return in anger this Autumn, so thoughts naturally turn to cleaning, protecting and dare I say disinfecting the smallest room in the house. Consider then 'Fresh Discs' a cageless rim block scented gel dispensed into the toilet bowl and effective for up to one week. Should be no more 'iffy' growths here then.....

Product and Packaging

Produced by S C Johnson, the US Company which brings you for example Raid, Pledge, Brillo, ,Mr Muscle and now this latest variant in the DuckTM range and is actually made in Mexico. Packaged in a non-descript predominantly blue or green/yellow box two 'flavours' are available, Lime Zest or Marine Blue. This box contains a gel holder filled with a gloopy substance which is remarkably similar in colour whatever the flavour, and undoubtedly both are a shade of green to my eyes. Also a blue plastic handle is included with pre-determined holes to ensure that you dispense just the right amount of gel,; at least in theory........Each box which should contain enough for 6 gel dispensing retails for about £3.00 full price. This sounds expensive until you consider that a disc should last at least a week or over one hundred flushes. I have to confess I bough mine half this price whilst on offer at Sainsbury's so this no doubt has influenced my impression of the value of the product.

Contents include predominantly surfactants or detergents to actually clean the bowl, and a raft of compounds including coumarin, limonene and eugenol to actually provide the fresh natural scent. It should be noted that anyone with perfume allergy would be advised to avoid those product as the Coumarin may cause an allergic reaction. Indeed the product was briefly withdrawn from the Italian market earlier this but it is unclear which compounds were the reason. Nevertheless there is no obvious disinfectant present so the product effectiveness must be based on it's cleaning properties.

The Product in Use

The box contains clear instructions and easy diagrams to understand how you should insert the plunger/applicator; remove and retain the end cap; then gently push the dispenser to the next hole; leaving a perfect disc discreetly in the bowl of the toilet. The gel should never touch your fingers. Well,.........I confess I did not read the instructions too carefully, after all how difficult could it be to dispense the little disc like wonder. I pushed like mad to ram the dispenser to the next hole and the gel oozed out around the end of the business end. So not as simple as they would have you believe to just hold and squish lightly under the rim. With a bit of practice over the next 5 discs I did get better, but more often than not the discs were more like unsightly blobs splattered on the bowl. Worse in trying to contain the 'Quatermass' dispensation I got it all over my fingers and I have to say the pungent smell was with me for many hours. User Beware, please try to avoid getting this on your fingers. But does it work..........?

I can confirm that a 'blob' does last over a week, and the toilet bowl seems sparkling clean. When flushed some froth or foam appears and the scent seems to be refreshed. The last bits in the dispenser which I could not squeeze out I scraped into the cistern and even this looks cleaner for it. The Lime Zest however, to me smells nothing like lime, and in fact was a touch overpowering in our small downstairs loo. The Marine Blue I found less pervasive and more natural, but even so could not be considered a non-intrusive smell. In fact you can smell these products whilst still contained in their original packaging, unopened. When we left the house uninhabited for a week the scent pervaded but the gel crusted over to an opaque hard looking surface yet this soon cleared again with new flushings and it did not appear to interfere with the effectiveness of the product.. Yes, it does seem to work but I am not sure that I like the appearance of random gel blobs lurking in the loo, but I do think it is better than the caged varieties.. No doubt with the intense competition amongst cleaning material manufacturers this dispersal concept will develop further and I think it will be an innovation here to stay.

Thanks for reading

Posted on Dooyoo and Ciao under the same author

Summary: Innovative Toilet Cleaning......needs development