GripStic Bag Clips. 12pc Durable Food Clip Set For Kitchen...

Most Helpful Review

"𝗕𝗢𝗧𝗧𝗢𝗠 𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘 first:𝗣𝗥𝗢: These bag sealers work as expected (and probably better than any standard “clip” solution), creating an airtight seal for any food bag; seem sturdy and durable; and are fairly easy to put on and take off.𝗖𝗢𝗡: Way too expensive for what they are* (so one star off from five); a cheaper alternative exists.Picture a rigid plastic straw (a little thinner than one of those old-fashioned candy sticks) with a slit down one side. Fold the open edge of a bag and slide the GRIPSTIC [“the stick”] over the fold through the entire length of the slit—the bag is now sealed, presumably airtight. A yellow “guide”—which is probably the main innovation of this device—makes it easy to thread the stick through the fold. That’s how it works. It is pretty ingenious. It takes maybe 10 seconds to learn how to slide the stick on—the most important thing is to have the slit facing down relative to the fold. The only difficulty is keeping the fold from bunching up ahead of sliding the stick over it but that’s easy enough to do. (Also, if the bag has a flap seam along the back, having the flap on the 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 of the fold in the 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 as the sliding of the stick makes it easier to slide the stick over the fold.)Does it work? It seems to. The bags seem airtight sealed all along the fold.Is it worth it? Well, it does the job so it’s not just gimmicky junk. But a more reasonable price might be a third of what it’s currently going for on Amazon ($23.95) and I thought someone will undoubtedly knock these off at a cheaper price.And it turns out someone has—and at roughly a third of the price, too.† Search for “Magic Bag Sealer Stick.” (I have no idea what the quality of that product is but it looks very similar, right down to the yellow “guide.”) If you don’t want to go that route, you can get a pack or two of the 3-count “variety pack” (at $7.95 each) because you might not need a dozen of these things.*Sure, the slit has to be just the right width for these bag sealers to work well and so the GRIPSTIC requires some careful manufacturing. But the classic BIC Cristal ballpoint pen, with its tungsten carbide ball milled down to an accuracy of a fraction of a millimeter to rotate within a brass bearing, allowing the flow of just the right amount of ink, is machined far more precisely—and that goes for as little as 13¢ a piece. These bag sealers, all plastic, with no precision parts, sell for more than 15 times that price.†At the time I originally wrote this review. The price appears to have risen since that time."