Review: Tollyjoy Liquid Cleanser

Less toil, more joy in washing!

We’ve never heard of this name until our first daughter popped out. Along with that bundle of joy, we found this bottle of joy. Sure, the name is a head scratcher (“jolly” joy? toll of joy? joyous toll? troll of joy?) but this product sure did give us a head’s nod in not only washing baby’s accessories, but anything washable in the sink.

TLDR

Listed at SGD 10.50 for 900ml in a bottle pump, it is very expensive if put up with, say, MAMA LEMON that goes for SGD7.50 / 2Litres. So consider your options well before buying. The price sure is a bummer, no buts.

Background

Founded in Singapore, we found their product design to be rather Singaporean - boring but efficient. See the 3 green leaves, bunch o grapes, an apple, then kids’ milk-tools and toys? We couldn’t figure any link between them until we read the product description at the back: “… excellent for cleaning baby bottles… toys… other baby accessories as well as vegetables and fruits.” There you have it. It can be used to clean whatever is in the product design, and this particular one is scented grape.

For the ingredieners and instruction-abiders’ pleasure below:

Performance

After quite a painful introduction, here’s some good news for you. This liquid is a joy to work with. And we discovered it out of laziness. Previously, we switched between using this cleanser and the off-the-shelf near-industrial dishwashing liquid (MAMA Lemon liquid) for our kids’ bottles and other dishes respectively. At some point, we just got lazy to refill both, and thankfully, MAMA Lemon’s bottle required us to lift it, tilt it and squeeze out. Tollyjoy’s however, is a convenient pump, and when pressed hard enough, it can reach the other end of the sink. Skwert, skwert! and straight to scrubs.

We had it effectively and easily clean ceramic, glass, stainless steel, steel, iron, cast iron, aluminum, smooth plastic of various grades and all sorts of other unclassified materials found in kitchen-ware. We use it to clean anything from night-over milk curds, tumeric-based dishes, reused cooking oil to even glue and grout stuck on our fingers. For cookware soaked in oil like deep frying pans, woks, you may need to apply more for more lathering to take place to dislodge the oil. Whatever utensil made from any material, and whatever edible substance we threw, it did the job well, with few exceptions.

Top of the list, it didn’t do well on oily silicon cooking utensils like a silicone frying spatula. It usually leaves it oily to touch although with no seen residue. It didn’t pass the oil-in-plastic-container test, and we had to overnight soak it with water + the cleanser. It didn’t do well for the oily / oil stains on older glass (yellowed / discolored, which really screams its age) and it didn’t budge the oil in micro-grooved, matte-textured plastic containers too. For these mentioned failures, we’d still recommend an overnight soak in any soap and water to really diffuse them for a hard scrub the next morning.

It lathers really well for a ‘mild’ soap, as seen with a single pump (about 1 peanuts’ volume) and water added:

The solution is transparent, and very much less viscous than MAMA Lemon’s, smells faintly of grape, and leaves your skin relatively neutral after a solid 15 minutes’ gig washing dishes. CAUTION: It’s still stated in product use, “For sensitive skin, wearing of gloves is recommended”. We know other soaps to really dig in our skin by then. It doesn’t leave a lingering smell on dishes or your hands either, so really good wins here.

We’ve also used it to hand-scrub bed sheets and clothes soiled by the kids’ vomit and pee. NOT in the product description, but it works for us! Gentle, but lathers enough for that dislodging of the nasties. It works for a great substitute when you’re lazy to reach for that chonkier box of baking soda. We’ve also used it mixed with water as a solution to dislodge tougher vomit grime on the floor, before a deep cleanse using other solutions.

NOTE: Please use them for these applications at your own risk and experimentation, as the product clearly pointed out its main applications in its efficient design (and detailed instructions at the back).

Verdict:

Expensive, if you have no toddler-things or vegetables to wash. There are scores of products out there to tackle dish grime at quarter the price. And to use them beyond its intended use is really at your own risk.

For us it’s a win-win - buying this to mainly wash the kids’ stuff, and then accidentally discovering we can use it for other things not listed on its recommended application. We found no problem with its use, only joy.