(MONEY Magazine) – During lunch hour at Rockefeller Center in New York City, there's one destination that's nearly as popular as McDonald's: the massage-products area at the Brookstone outlet. Customers recline in the $2,995 butter-smooth leather massage lounge chair, sigh with relief as they sink into the Tempur-Pedic foam mattress and fade into a stupefied daze under the influence of the shiatsu neck massager.

Call it sybaritic indulgence if you like, but this quest for relief is understandable. Back pain strikes an estimated 80% of Americans at some point in their lives. And if that includes you, perhaps you've noticed that there's now a whole industry out there that feels your pain: The aisles of the Sharper Image and Hammacher Schlemmer are filled with gadgets that promise quick self-cures, and demand for back products has even fueled the growth of specialty stores. A chain called Relax the Back stocks about 500 products, from mattresses (air-adjustable or memory foam) to lumbar cushions (two inches or three inches thick) to cervical pillows (hard or soft). Relax the Back has grown from nine outlets to 102 in the past five years, and the company expects its sales to top $75 million in 1998.

So people are clearly buying these gizmos--but do any of them really work?

Well, as anyone with back problems knows, cures (and causes) are elusive, and the effectiveness of a particular treatment can vary greatly from person to person and from cause to cause. "You could see any number of specialists and get different advice from all of them," observes Dr. Augustus A. White III, a Harvard University Medical School professor and orthopedic surgeon who wrote Your Aching Back: A Doctor's Guide to Relief.

Still, many specialists say that, depending on the source of your pain, you can find some relief--and perhaps prevent a recurrence of the problem--if you find the right tool. If your trouble stems from long-term bad habits, for example, you can help correct those habits by using the right chair or mattress, notes Scott Donkin, a Lincoln, Neb. chiropractor and author of Sitting on the Job.

But here's where the advice gets squishy. Which one of those hundreds of offerings is right for you? "Whatever gives you the best night's sleep," offers John Starr, an orthopedic surgeon in Washington, D.C. "You have to go out and kick a few tires." That wasn't the most encouraging piece of advice we'd ever heard--but it did inspire us to put some back-relief products to the test ourselves. So we decided to assemble an in-house panel of stooped and hard-to-please MONEY staffers--who complained of such ailments as chronic lower-back pain and aching necks--to sample dozens of goods from five chain stores: Brookstone, Hammacher Schlemmer, JoAnne's Bed & Back Shops, Relax the Back and the Sharper Image.

Before we go any further, a very important caveat: If you have serious back trouble, don't be fooled into thinking that some store-bought device is going to heal you. The wrong thing could actually make some problems worse; check with your doctor. Also note that for this test we stuck to devices that cost less than $250; if you're considering anything pricier than that, it's a good idea to seek a doctor's advice first. (In rare cases, you may find that a physician can prescribe products that your insurance will cover.)

We've organized the results according to where and when the products are best put to use. Here's what we found.

On the job. Most office chairs have a relatively flat back. But, ideally, you should sit with your lower back curved slightly forward. That's where lumbar cushions come in--they can help you achieve the proper posture by filling the gap between your lower back and the chair, says Donkin.

Sounds simple enough. Trouble is, most people are used to sitting with a flat lower back and their shoulders slumped slightly forward. And correcting bad posture can be painful for a few days. "Sometimes people get increased stress because they can no longer slump in the same way," says Thomas Lemens, who is a founding board member of the North American Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique, a method of improving posture to eliminate back and neck disorders.

Maybe that's why so few MONEY editors and writers liked these products; several discarded their cushions in less than a day, complaining of sore muscles. Another problem: We found that many lumbar cushions didn't fit our typical-size office chairs. Most were too large, making our testers jut forward from their seats like hood ornaments.

That's one reason we preferred the $87 Back Buddy from JoAnne's Bed & Back Shops. It comes with a large cushion that fills the entire back of the chair and a smaller lumbar cushion that you can take off or move up and down for a better fit.

For the commute (or other journey). Next, we tested lumbar cushions for use during travel (some can even be taken to the movie theater or a sporting event). Our choice here: a small, rectangular $29.95 Self-Inflating Back Rest, found at Relax the Back. Thanks to the air-control nozzle, testers again get precisely the amount of support they wanted. Another plus: Let out all the air, and you can easily fit the pillow into a briefcase. On the downside, because it doesn't strap in place, it may slide too low on your back during a bumpy ride.

A horseshoe-shaped pillow can also increase your comfort while you're sitting upright in a car, train or airplane. We liked the $25 Buckwheat Travel Pillow from Brookstone; similar models are sold by Relax the Back and JoAnne's for about the same price. Besides preventing neck ache, the pillow may keep you from waking up, slumped forward with a pool of drool on your silk blouse. One caveat: Don't use the pillow while you're driving, since it prevents you from moving your head easily.

At home. Massage products invariably promise all the benefits of a $100-an-hour personal masseuse. But we found that in practice most delivered nothing more than slightly tingling vibration. In fact, some testers reported that one home massage seat left them nauseated and gave them a headache.

Far and away our test group's favorite massage item was the low-cost plastic Jack massager we got for $11.45 from JoAnne's Bed & Back Shops. A back rub with the four-pronged device--by a friend or even yourself--can provide quick, low-tech relief.

MONEY staffers also raved about Brookstone's $240 electric Mini Pro Thumper Massager, the most expensive massage item we tried. The Thumper pounded out kinks just as its name suggests. Of course, it's a bit heavier than other hand-held massagers, so (as with the Jack) you may be better off getting a friend to use it on you rather than operating it yourself.

In bed. Back-pain sufferers often compound their problems while they sleep; to help prevent this, experts recommend a cervical pillow. "It has a hump where the neck curve is, which helps you maintain the curve while sleeping on your back or side," explains Rani Lueder, an ergonomics consultant in Encino, Calif. This hump or neck roll, in turn, keeps your spine in better alignment. Cervical pillows come in various sizes--generally large and small--and degrees of softness. It's important to try them out in the store, since many stores don't let you return pillows.

One member of our test crew called the Sunflower Cervical Support Pillow, which sells for $109 at Relax the Back, a pillow from heaven. Besides giving him a good night's sleep, it kept him from sleeping on his stomach--which doctors say can be bad for the back.

Finally, if you're a back-pain sufferer looking for a little bedtime reading, consider Treat Your Back Without Surgery by Stephen Hochschuler and Bob Reznik of the Texas Back Institute (Hunter House, $14.95). One of the best new books we reviewed on the subject, it explains every possible way to treat back and neck pain from biofeedback to acupuncture to choosing a surgeon.

And when you shop around, buy only from stores with a trial period or a "satisfaction guaranteed" policy. Relax the Back, for instance, lets you return most large-ticket items after 10 days if you're not pleased.

If you are lucky, you will find something that makes you feel as good as one Brookstone shopper whom we encountered recently. Relaxing in a massaging lounge chair, she sighed happily, "Who needs a boyfriend?"