- In this report
- Overview
Glad ForceFlex vs. Hefty
This article appeared in 
The claim
Five years ago, an ad for Glad ForceFlex trash bags showed their material stopping an elephant's charge: Tusks couldn't puncture the plastic. At the time, we found that ForceFlex was actually more apt to rip than was competitor Hefty Ultra Flex. Fast-forward to today, when an ad shows a couple of movers dropping a piano from a great height, then bagging the broken bits in ForceFlex, which has "stretchable strength." Clearly, it was time for a rematch.
The check
No, we didn't destroy a piano. We mimicked one, stuffing about 16 pounds of jagged wood and metal pieces into 30-gallon Glad ForceFlex bags and Hefty Ultra Flex bags, which claim "puncture protection." The Glad bags are 1.05 thousandths of an inch thick; the Hefty, 1.3. We put the 11 pieces into 10 bags of each brand, using the same order of pieces each time. Then we added two 10-pound weights and one 5-pounder.
Bottom line
Be glad if you use Hefty. Although some pieces poked out, each bag held all the "piano" parts plus 20 to 25 pounds. No Glad bags did as well; some dumped their contents even before we added weight. And 25 Hefty bags cost just $7.99; 25 Glad bags, $9.99.
