Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After reading some mixed reviews on these I decided to order them anyway. I was tired of the new neoprene kind which are the only ones I can find in stores nearby these days. The $10 pair of those I've tried, melted after just a few uses so I figured around $8 for 3 of these was a great price and also wouldn't be a huge loss if I ended up disappointed. These turned out to be exactly what I was looking for though. Nice standard potholders like the ones I'm used to and they've been doing the job just fine so far. There are a few things I remember from some of the other reviews which I'd like to address. Someone mentioned there was a horrible plastic smell. I didn't find that to be the case. Yes they did smell a little bit like plastic when I first unwrapped them but that's what they were packaged in, so that's not surprising. The tags said to wash them before first use so I did. No more plastic smell whatsoever after that. As for them shrinking, they have very clear washing instructions on the tags which say to wash them in cold. I did that and they didn't shrink or warp at all. Maybe particularly bad stains won't go that way, I don't know, I haven't gotten them that dirty yet but I would try adding a non-bleach stain remover to the cold cycle first, instead of going against the washing instructions on the tags and then blaming the product and the 100% cotton front for doing what cotton usually does in hot water.