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Does It Really Do That: Hot Buns

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- The commercial makes you smile, maybe shake your head and it definitely plays with the name of this hair styling product.

A little racy, but they market hot buns for kids, too.

With hot buns, you're supposed to be able to just roll, snap and wrap your hair to make a beautiful bun in less than a minute.

We needed a group of ladies to help us find out if hot buns really does that, and the cheerleaders at East Catholic Grade School were happy to be our testers.

"They're a fun group. They have a lot of energy and a lot of fun," said East Catholic Cheerleading Coach Melissa Verdini.

Many of the girls also dance, and need to have their hair up for that. Melissa's two daughters dance and cheer, and she'd love some hair help.

"If I can make it work it would; I've tried other things that I haven't been able to make work so, this'll be good," said Verdini.

First, we went over the instructions, but it took the girls a minute to get past the look of the hot buns.

Trying to move on, the instructions tell us to first make a ponytail, then place the hot buns at the end of it, roll hair in towards the head, find the snap at the end to secure.

Then slide the hair around to cover up the foam, and pull a band up and around to make sure everything stays in place.

No shortage of volunteers, so we went through the process.

First, you make a ponytail. Then you place the hot buns at the bottom of the ponytail and roll them upwards towards the head. Next, you snap the hot buns closed. After you snap the hot buns closed, you look for the band to pull around the hair to secure it. Finally, you slide the hair around to cover the foam.

Then we found shorter and layered hair would need some pins to keep everything smooth.

We tried again with long, thick, one-length hair.

When trying with longer hair, take one very thick one length hair. Then make a ponytail. After that, roll up the hair in hot buns. With thicker hair, snap the hot buns together a little harder. Then find the band and wrap that around the hair. Finally, spread the hair around the foam.

The snapping was a little harder with the thicker hair, but it felt secure, but didn't look secure -- and again, might require a few pins to hold it in place.

The commercial, and the packaging claims you can get perfect hot buns in less than a minute. Of course we had to test that.

Some of the girls wanted to try it themselves, while others thought they'd need a helper.

Then we started the timer, and they were off.

They worked alone, and in pairs to try to get it done, and in the end, one out of 13 cheerleaders were finished.

How was it to work with? The girls and moms said it was hard to snap, hard to wrap the hair around it tightly, hard to tuck in shorter end, but they did think they could get better and faster at it with more practice.

But bottom line, hot buns promises just roll, snap and wrap for a simple styling solution and make beautiful buns in less than a minute. Does it really do that? We got a lukewarm reaction to hot buns.

Melissa would like to keep working with it, but isn't completely sold yet.

"I'd like it if they were all tight like this one, but most were looser like this one," said Verdini.

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