dish the dirt

Ah, the method dish cube! So small, so powerful, so smell-tastic (especially the lavender, it made the whole kitchen smell great!), so... well, discontinued?

Why? I've been curious about this for quite some time. Years ago (I'm not sure how long, but it feels like a while), method introduced the dish cube to their line. Dish cubes had begun to gain popularity, and so it seemed natural for them to do this! And they were great! Here's a review of the product from about.com:

"Method dish cubes are convenient, work well, and smell great. Convenience is a great selling point, when consumers are able to drop a little packet into the dishwasher and be done. No measuring, no overfilling, no spilling. The Method dish cubes did a fantastic job even on baked food and grease. (Just don't get the cubes wet or they will dissolve instantly.)

Method's dish cubes are fantastic for our fast paced life. I loved the idea of my son loading the dishwasher without me worrying about spilled detergent, overfilling the detergent cup, or even using too little. He took a dish cube, put it in the detergent cup and started the dishwasher.

I hate prerinsing dishes, but some detergents just aren't strong enough to remove all the dirt on dishes. Method dish cubes did a fantastic job on even baked on food, and especially on grease. My dishes looked great without harsh chemical residue. Running the dishwasher alone with a Method dish cube, left the dishwasher clean and sparkling inside."

Sounds great, doesn't it! Then, poof, they were gone from Target shelves. method home's site states in their FAQ section:

"Where can i find the method dish cubes? - We're sorry. method dish cubes have been discontinued in most retailers. There are some available for sale at methodhome.com." If you do attempt to order them through their quickshop on the method home site, lavender apparenty has been completely discontinued, cucumber lemon is out-of-stock, but you can apparenty still order pink grapefruit, at least it let me add it to my shopping cart.

So my question is, what happened to the method dish cube? Is it gone? Only available on their site? I thought for a time they were refining the product, and going to re-release it. But no go. It seems to leave a hole in the dish washing products they carry. Not everyone washes dishes by hand only; so it would seem natural they'd have a dishwasher variety. To be honest, I had to move on to Seventh Generation dishwasher detergent, since I could no longer find the method brand. (Sacrilege, I know!)

If anyone at method knows what happened to the dish cube, drop me a comment or email! I'd like to know! According to the polls currently going on method lust (check the right sidebar) dish cubes come in at no. 2 (only below hair care) for one of the most requested new items we wish method would produce! So there is definitely still a demand for these! Are you one of those people?