When Kristina Murray and her husband, Christopher, bought stainless-steel appliances for their house in Cornwall, N.Y., she thought it "looked really cool nestled under mocha-stained cabinets and black granite countertops." Now that their toddler has begun to put his hands and mouth on virtually everything, she's seeing stainless in a different light: "We realized it takes a lot of work to maintain its shiny finish."

Playing the role of toddler, we smeared peanut butter, jelly, ketchup, mustard, and tomato sauce on sheets of different types of stainless steel, let them sit for at least 24 hours, rinsed off any goo, and used the cleaners as directed.

What we found. All the products cleaned up all the stains except mustard, which left permanent speckles on our steel sheets. All the products also removed fingerprints easily, though they didn't repel new prints. One spray seems to be better than others at limiting streaking on a variety of finishes. Three of them take only one step; the others take two--one to clean and one to buff.

CR's take. All work well. Buy by price and type. The Ratings (available to ConsumerReports.org subscribers only) show cost per use, based on the price of one sheet or how much cream or spray it takes to clean about 12 square feet, including the cost of one Bounty paper towel sheet.