I’ve Been Slimed! Hands-On Review Of Amazon’s Best-Selling Interior and Keyboard Cleaning Schmutz

If you go to Amazon’s home page, at the top in one of the many menu bars, there’s a tab labeled “Top Sellers.” That takes you to a page with a menu bar on the left, full of different shopping categories. Are you still with me or have you already gotten distracted and bought 7 things you didn’t even know existed? Now you’re at “Automotive Top Sellers.” Scroll down the list and I can just about guarantee you will see this product in the top 10. It’s called PULIDIKI car cleaning gel. No, I can’t and won’t tell you how to pronounce that. I tried and my best guesses would get me an email from The Drive’s human resources representative. Regardless, it is among
Amazon’s top interior car cleaners, and it demands your attention.

Not only is this a permanent fixture in Amazon’s Top 10 Best Sellers, but it’s normally the cheapest. Interestingly, the most expensive thing in the top 10 while I’m writing this is windshield wipers. If I drop down to number 12, there’s the NOCO GB40 Jump Starter, which is probably the type of thing you expect to see from us. So why? Why am I reviewing the gloop I got when I was five, in a plastic acorn out of one of those 25-cent vending machines? No why? I’m genuinely asking. Anyway, I spent seven bucks on this so let’s do it.

What is car cleaning gel?

If I were the type to get nerdy, and I never pass up an opportunity, I’d inform you this car cleaning gel is what’s known as a non-Newtonian Fluid. First, a Newtonian Fluid’s viscosity has a linear relationship with shear stress. If you put water, gasoline, alcohol, etc. under pressure, their viscosities don’t change. With a non-Newtonian fluid, the viscosity will react to the amount of shear strain, basically the force you’re applying to it. PULIDIKI is like silly putty; it’s called a Dilatant. As shear strain increases, so does viscosity. If you lightly push on it, it oozes like a gel. If you throw it against the wall, it bounces like rubber. This is what makes the magic happen with PULIDIKI. Side note: There’s also Non-Newtonian Fluids like thread-locking compounds called thixotropics, that decrease in viscosity in reaction to shear strain.

When you lightly push PULIDIKI into the crevices of air vents, your shifter trim, cupholders, every place you can’t get a cloth into, and your vacuum isn’t strong enough to evacuate, this gel flows in there and wraps itself around all that crap. Then, the magic happens when you yank it out, it increases its viscosity, and everything becomes stuck inside the ooze and gets yoinked out. Slime like this is usually made from poly vinyl alcohol and borate ions. When the two combine it polymerizes to form even longer molecules that will slide around slowly, but bind up when you try to move them quickly, like a pile of spaghetti. SCIENCE!

Testing PULIDIKI and wondering where my life went wrong

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but there was a long period of my life when every other week I’d be greeted by name as I sauntered aboard an A380 to jet-off to an exotic location to drive even more exotic hypercars, or racecars. I’d drive Stelvio in a McLaren or lap Estoril in a WTCC BMW before sipping martinis with the world’s most powerful auto executives. Today, I rolled a gelatinous purple turd around my dashboard. Life’s weird sometimes, kids.

PULIDIKI’s maker thinks every car’s vents are full of dust and crusties. While the interior of my family crossover is only slightly cleaner than your average back alley crime scene, my vents were shockingly clean-ish. The little dust spots were quickly glopped away and the vents make a funny imprint in the slime — so success. I should first note, getting PULIDIKI out of the jar is a strange process. It’s been sitting in that jar for who knows how long. All the air that may have been in between the gloop and the wall of the jar is now completely at the top. Those with any mold-making experience already know where I’m going with this. Not only does it take considerable force and dexterous scooping to try and “get under it,” but the schluuurping and farting noises will have your kids literally ROFL-ing. 

I never took the whole thing out, I used part of it. A little goes a long way. It does work great in pulling the tiny-bits-of-whatever out of all the seams in your dash. But, the real winner here are all those stupid storage cubbies that aren’t good for anything but collecting dust, and the bottoms of cupholders that are otherwise impossible to clean. I eat a lot of trail mix so my cupholders are filled with tiny salt crystals, slivers of almond skins, and extra-sticky bits of dried cranberries. All of it, gone in one pull.

My car, like most modern cars, is filled with every rubberized and plated-patterned-plasticated surface anyone in the interior design department’s building could think of. My fore-dash, is a hexagonal-dimpled rubber expanse that not only creates a more prominent star-spangled-glare on the inside of the windshield when the sun hits it, but is amazing at holding onto dust and resisting conventional cleaning techniques. Rolling PULIIDIKI into a shape resembling a candy bar and then kneading it around my dashboard resulted in a factory-fresh appearance — maybe better than any interior detailing product I’ve tried so far. It doesn’t leave it glossy or oily, it just lifts everything off. I should point out, it isn’t laying down any sort of protective product either, so there’s that.

But wait, there’s even more. After all this successful testing, I still wasn’t sold on a $7 product that works exactly as advertised. So I tried cleaning other stuff. Yes, it works on keyboards. But, my dudes, ya know that dust ring around your laptop’s touchpad? This pulls it right out. The holes on the bottom of our phone, it clears those out, too. “Don’t stop there, Mike!” It cleans THE $@*# out of LEGO, plastic models, Hot Wheels all those fragile things with tons of detail that you haven’t figured out how to clean.

There must be a downside right? 

As I said above, most of these slimes, slurm, gaks, and whatever else they may be labeled as are made from PVA(poly vinyl alcohol) like Elmer’s Glue, and borax dissolved in water. PULIDIKI says it’s made from all-natural ingredients, without bothering to list those ingredients.

I tried finding the actual manufacturer of the product and boy was that a rabbit hole. There are apparently a minimum of 73 different plants that make this same stuff in China. That’s what I found with just a Google search which means there are probably twice as many. I also can’t find an SDS, Safety Data Sheet, for it. I read in a couple of places where this is classified as a tool, not a cleaning chemical. That could explain it. It says right on the jar “Keep away from kids, don’t eat it!” Look, as a car enthusiast, regardless of whether it’s a tool or a cleaning product, “don’t eat it” is pretty much day one, rule one. But, some people didn’t get that safety briefing. 

PULIDIKI Car Cleaning Gel The Verdict

As I’ve already mentioned, this tool or cleaning product does a very specific task, very well. It is designed to get stuff out of hard-to-reach places or clean difficult surfaces. It works great in a real car’s interior, but for cleaning LEGO this is absolutely a knock-it-out-of-the-park homerun. 

You still need a good car vacuum, so PULIDIKI won’t replace your $200 cordless stick vac. It cleans your car’s interior, but won’t offer any protection from the sun. It does clean it so well, and it’s only $7. When I ordered this, there was a small part of me that thought this was a huge mistake and was going to be a waste of everyone’s time. The opposite happened. I was pleasantly surprised by a very affordable thing, that does more than advertised. Just don’t eat it.