At Consumer Reports we test lots of big things like cars, refrigerators and wide-screen TVs. But there's a team whose job it is to find "small stuff" to test. So when we saw the commercial for Flex Seal in which the pitchman applies Flex Seal to a screen in the bottom of a boat and floats away, we just knew we had to check the claims.

Not wanting to be wasteful, we made our own pint-sized version of a rowboat with a screen bottom, sprayed the screen and said bon voyage to a Teddy bear. And through the magic of video editing, Bernie Deitrick, our lab tech, was able to join him.

The handyman in a can didn't fare as well on other claims made for the as-seen-on-TV product. Three coats didn't seal the joints and end caps of a gutter and although it did seal a cracked flower pot, it took more than one coat of paint to conceal the repair.