Anyone who drives or sits in the front passenger seat of a car has been a contributor to the proverbial mess graveyard that is the gap between your chair and the center console. Unless you’re some sort of neat freak who routinely vacuums or cleans up messes in your vehicle to keep it looking and feeling brand-new, you will likely find a variety of snack crumbs, fossilized french fries, a pair of sunglasses you forgot you had, some coins, a pen, or a tube of melted and resolidified Chapstick in the seat gap and underneath the chair itself — among many other knick-knacks.
Enter Drop Stop, currently a best-selling product on Amazon in the Automotive Seat Cover category. More popularly known for its debut on the TV show “Shark Tank,” this car seat gap filler promises to solve all your cleanup worries by making the crack through which random items usually fall through completely non-existent. Priced at $25 at the time of writing, highly rated at 4.6 out of 5 stars with over 66,000 customer reviews, I wondered if this thing warranted all the online praise. With an upcoming five-hour road trip, I knew the perfect time to give it a whirl was now.
First impressions
Everything I needed to know was on the box — what the Drop Stop looked like out of the box and what it’s supposed to look like once I install it. I opened the box, pulled out the gap fillers, and really liked how sturdy it felt in my hands. The casing was made of a durable material — high-grade neoprene, according to the Amazon page — and seemed to retain its shape well even after a few solid squeezes. It also came in a nondescript black color, so I knew it would go well with our car’s interior.
Upon looking at it out of the car, the contraption seemed a bit narrow girth-wise. I wasn’t sure if it would fit snugly in the seat gap of our family vehicle, a 2014 Chrysler Town & Country minivan. Since the listing claimed it was designed to universally fit any vehicle with a center-console-and-gap-in-between configuration, I pressed on. I’d just stretch or scrunch it up if I had to since the material felt pliant and flexible.
Installation preparation
To really enhance the veracity of my hands-on testing, I first wanted to create a realistic mental image of what the state of cleanliness our minivan is usually in as well as our level of need for the accessory. All the items I mentioned earlier — including a stray Taco Bell sauce packet that’s been there for who knows how long — were things I actually found underneath the driver and passenger seats when I did a pre-road trip cleaning. When I told my husband I would be testing the Drop Stop, he was very excited as he’s prone to drop his mobile phone through the seat gap, usually at the most inopportune time when he needs to use Google Maps for directions while in motion. This made the Drop Stop even more promising.
Even though the Drop Stop seemed pretty self-explanatory and easy to situate, I checked to see if it came with a user manual. Not only did it have easy-to-understand installation instructions that had step-by-step visuals, it also included a YouTube code that led to a brief “pro installation tips” tutorial, which I played and appreciated.
Dropping in the Drop Stop
Like the video and paper instructions suggested, I leaned the passenger seat all the way back and proceeded to install the first gap filler on the opposite (driver) side. It was very easy to do. Contrary to my initial impression, it wasn’t too thin. It sufficiently sealed the gap as far as I could tell.
I then got my husband involved and asked him to place the gap filler on my side by sitting in the driver’s seat. He, too, did it in a jiffy and without hardship. However, because the minivan’s passenger seat had this hunk of plastic right underneath the seat belt catch, the end bit of the gap filler weirdly hung. I couldn’t quite push it all the way down to below the catch.
My concerns about this momentary snag went away after we readjusted the seats in the upright position.
Everything looked good and ready to go. It was time to hit the road.
All the things the Drop Stop… stopped
As the front passenger seat occupant and mom to two rambunctious and restless young boys seated in the back, I was the designated snack and whatever-anything-anyone-needed handler. Over the course of our five hour-long road trip from Las Vegas to San Diego, I handed out chips, gummy snacks, cookies, chocolate, and the like while also partaking in them myself. We got takeout from In-N-Out and ate the leftovers in the car. We did all the things one would expect.
When I say the Drop Stop worked in our favor, I do mean it worked. It caught the stray Raisinets that accidentally dropped from my hand. It kept my husband’s mobile phone above the surface. More importantly, it extended the storage capacity of the center console — I confidently put my sunglasses and an open bag of gummy bears on it without a care in the world.
Freebies, issues, and final thoughts
The Drop Stop came with two bonus goodies: a gel pad that you apparently can stick on any flat surface in the car and will prevent anything you place on it from falling to the floor, and a handy LED flashlight in the shape of a credit card. To be quite honest, I totally forgot I had them and failed to try them out during the long drive. Missing out on using them didn’t diminish how impressed I was with the Drop Stop, so I’m going to chalk these items up as a welcome perk that I may or may not need one day.
One issue that did come up was that the Drop Stop apparently may not stay put the whole time, especially if you switch drivers and adjust the driver seat. On a separate occasion, while I was driving to Walmart, I noticed that the Drop Stop on my side was dislodged. According to the paper instructions that came in the box, “In the rare case Drop Stop pops out of place, stick a piece of double-sided tape between the front of Drop Stop and the car seat, and tuck back into gap.” Considering the convenience the gap fillers provided in general by lessening the cleanup, it was a small adjustment I was willing to make. Even without going the tape route, we just needed to make it a habit to give the Drop Stop a bit of a tug and ensure it stays in place no matter which one of us drives the vehicle.
At the end of the day, I’m glad we purchased the Drop Stop. Since getting it, I have not had to gather up an embarrassing amount of gunk underneath my car seat or my husband’s. It’s definitely a game-changer for occasionally messy families like mine.
