Not every caulking job requires a full tube to fill seams around a room's molding or a bath tub. GE Caulk Singles from Momentive Performance Materials, Huntersville, NC, dispense effortlessly with one hand, with little knowhow, tools or time required. The one-time-use, 1.25-oz caulk packets make small jobs and touchups easy without the need for a caulking gun, a large, new tube of caulk or a used, half-empty, dried-up one that barely works.

Available since June in white paintable acrylic or white or clear water-resistant silicone, the quick-fix Caulk Singles carry a suggested retail price of $2.29 to $2.99 each. Disposable and squeezable, each unit-of-use foil packet with an E-flute corrugated backing has a tear-tab opening that dispenses a small bead of caulk fter the tab is torn away and the packet is folded in half and squeezed. Foldable bellows use the pressure of a hand to help emit an even, neat bead of caulk.

The palm-sized packets are handy for kitchens, bathrooms, chair rails, tight spaces, awkward locations and wherever small caulking jobs crop up. The touch-up caulk is currently available nationally at Lowe's, Ace Hardware, Do It Best and True Value.

The packets are made of a 5.5-mil stock that incorporates a foil laminate from Technipaq (www.technipaq.com), and a biaxially oriented nylon layer, along with the E-flute corrugated backing. The foil laminate layer is flexo-printed by Technipaq in 3 colors. The pouches are formed and filled by New Century Packaging, Inc. (www.newcenturypackaging.net).

The eye-catching graphic design was created with help from industrial design firm Ideo (www.ideo.com). The top front panel of each package is printed with the phrase, “Tear, Squeeze, Toss,” emphasizing the convenience aspects of the deceptively simple new product with its ingeniously engineered, palm-sized packaging.

Caulk Singles are also the subject of a caulksingles.com website/blog. There, cauking projects are related by consumers who have completed jobs with Caulk Singles and often include images of their projects.

“We've had an extremely positive response from consumers,” says Trisha McGuire, communications specialist at Momentive Performance Materials. Since April, thousands of consumers have posted blog entries regarding their positive experiences with Caulk Singles and how easy it is to use,” McGuire tells PD. “Many consumers say they will now do caulk [projects], but they wouldn't have before the development of Caulk Singles,” she notes.