New Product: The StayHold Cargo Holder

Normally I write about items you can use in your office, but the product I’m reviewing today is more for you to use in your personal life. I suppose you could use it if you travel for work and need to transport samples and such.

Introducing the Velcro Brand StayHold Cargo Holder.

This caught my eye because I drive an SUV and have a large cargo area. Things are always falling over in the back and this looked like a great way to solve that problem. You can see the picture on the package that shows the groceries falling over. That’s a great illustration and one that many people can relate to. I decided to test it out.

Their slogan is good - Grips Real Tough. Holds Your Stuff. Hmm.. ..we’ll see about that. Let the testing begin!

My first question is this: How can the grip teeth grab my cargo liner? You can plainly see on the front of the package it says “Works on Liners & Carpets” so it must work, right? You get two holders in the package so I put them both in my cargo area - one holding a light bag of loose items and one holding a FatMax Power Station. The power station is a bit heavy and it’s one of the things that is constantly falling over no matter where I put it. The way the holder works is you put the item you want to secure on the flat part of the holder and then you shove the holder up against the side or back walls of your trunk/cargo area as you see in the picture on the right side of the package. It also comes with two straps that you can feed through the vertical slots on the holder to hold additional items. The grip teeth are supposed to keep the holder in place and your cargo stays secure. However, as I suspected, the teeth didn’t grip my liner - the StayHold slides around easily when nothing is on it.

Undaunted, I drove around as usual for a day and then checked my back area. Both items were still upright (mostly) and secure, but the power station was leaning a bit. Because of the power station’s design, it inherently leans in one direction, so I turned it around the other way in the holder. Then I replaced the bag of loose items with a jug of antifreeze and drove around for another day. Day 2 - both items were upright and in place, but the antifreeze had slid to the right and was almost off the holder.

Now I had to test it on carpet. I folded down my third row seat and slid the StayHold across the carpet. No dice - it still didn’t grab. I don’t know what kind of carpet and liners the manufacturer tested this on when they were developing it, but I have standard types in my car and it didn’t work on any of them. I secured the power station on the holder against the back of my second row seat and drove around for a third day. Day 3 - the power station was leaning substantially, which was tipping the StayHold and it had pulled away from my seatback but it hadn’t actually fallen over - yet.

I’m underwhelmed with this product. The grip teeth were useless - it may as well have a smooth bottom. And really, since it only works by being shoved up against the wall or your seatback, you can do that with anything. It’s the weight of the item you’re trying to secure that keeps the StayHold in place since the grippers don’t work. I can leverage one box against another to hold it in place - I don’t necessarily need to buy a special product for that purpose.

That being said, you don’t always have a second box or something heavy enough to use for this purpose and the StayHold is convenient. It doesn’t require a lot of space and for the most part, it did what it said it would do - keep my stuff from falling over (well, sort of). It just doesn’t do it quite the way it advertises itself.

I give it 3 paperclips.