If you’re like us here at WoWasis, you’ve become damned sick and tired of your checked or carry-on liquids leaking out of your small travel bottles, then having to wash a whole bunch of stuff to get it all clean again. The biggest villain in this crime story is the airplane. As pressure changes, liquids start oozing out of bottles, no matter how well you tighten them. The biggest problems we have are with shampoos and pre-electric shave lotion. Yes, we keep them in plastic bags, but especially as is the case with the pre-shave lotion, we end up losing most or all of it in one international flight. They don’t sell pre-shave liquid in most Asian countries (but they do sell electric razors — go figure). So after hundreds of flights, we were determined to try to identify bottles that were small enough to be eligible for baggage, yet didn’t leak.

And hallelujah, we just tested one brand (in two different bottle configurations) and found nary a leak after five flights. So we’re recommending Nalgene leak proof bottles. These bottles were originally made to store lab samples in conditions where spillage could have major consequences. One bright soul at Nalgene determined that these bottles would be great for travel, too. And they are. We like the Nalgene 4 ounce Flip Top bottle for our shampoo and the Nalgene 2 ounce Drop-Dispenser bottle for our alcohol-based pre-shave liquid. The latter has a tiny cap that seals the top of a dispenser spout and it’s a gem.

With every good situation, though, there’s bound to be a drawback. And it’s Nalgene’s website. While they sell as plethora of leakproof bottles, they don’t feature these tiny TSA-ready bottles that are essential for traveling with liquids in your carry-on luggage, so you’ll have to find them at a retailer. We found ours at a chain outfit called The Container Store. We’d imagine that there are many others. We’ve attached a photo of our bottles so you can get a sense of what they look like. This is a superior flight travel product, too bad the folks at Nalgene don’t understand the market well enough to put these on their website. Next time, after you’ve just unpacked your luggage and found the usual monster leaks, you’ll wish that you had invested in a leak-proof TSA-enabled bottle for liquids. The Nalgene bottles are the real deal.