Recommendations for leakproof, TSA-approved (100ml / 3.4oz) toiletry bottles
currently sitting in an airport lounge waiting for a flight. while rummaging in my carry-on to grab a charging cable, I discovered that one of the little plastic bottles I have for travel toiletries broke open and leaked body wash all over. didn't do any permanent damage to any electronics or anything, luckily. but this is very annoying and I'm going to replace all of these bottles so this doesn't happen again.
the current ones I have are just generic little plastic bottles I bought from Bez-Mart. suppose I wanted to splurge on a fancy version of them - is there a "buy it for life" sort of equivalent?
metal might not be an option because it might look weird on security scanners, but something like the polycarbonate plastics they use to make Nalgene bottles, maybe? having them be squeezable would be nice but isn't a strict requirement.
for people unfamiliar with the incredibly stupid US TSA rules about this, anything "liquid" (including toothpaste etc) needs to be in a container no larger than 100ml / 3.4 fl oz, and then all of those bottles need to fit into a quart (about 1 liter) sized clear plastic bag. so not just any containers will do, they'll need to be small enough to be "TSA approved".
Sorry if I am explaining something that you already know, but you can make any container leakproof with one step: Squeeze as much air as possible out of the container before packing it away.
Any air trapped in a container at ground level will be the same density as the surrounding air. When that air is taken up to 30,000ft, it is a higher density than the surrounding air and wants to expand. You may have noticed this in reverse if you have ever taken a drink from a disposable water bottle mid-flight and noticed it collapsed a bit after you land. If your shampoo is between the air and the cap of the bottle, it will get pushed out to make room.
Just squeeze any excess air out of your toiletries and you will never suffer another leak.
EDIT: Oops just noticed that my reading comprehension is bad, and your issue is the travel bottles breaking in your bag on the ground. I would just recommend a hard-shell toiletry case. That would be the best way to prevent any bottles from breaking in your bag no matter how cheap they are.
I travel a fair bit, and never really had an issue with this. Maybe you can just keep using the cheap little bottles, but get a cheap little container for them, such as a plastic pencil case? I usually keep leak-possible things in one or more resealable ("zippable") plastic bags.
I got some cheap silicone bottles off of Amazon that can probably be found on AliExpress for cheaper, which have worked well for me. I place them in a sandwich sized ziplock bag for disaster prevention. Been on three or four trips since I got them, a couple of which were trans-pacific, and have had no problems.
Will note that I only carry fairly viscous shampoo/body wash, though. Your mileage may vary with thinner substances.
Nothing will ever be leakproof. Ever.
But I have liked my Eagle Creek toiletry kit. They are silicon (or something similar) squeeze bottles. The bag that they come with is terrible, but the bottles are good.
Defense in depth. Put your containers in more containers. Then they all need to fail for you to make a mess.
This is pretty standard practice by airport security across the world.
Keep them inside the quart-size bag that you already have? It's essentially what they do when shipping liquids in the mail, and it keeps the liquids for leaking on anything but other sealed bottles.