The Shed Pal Sucks

You see the ads on television for all sorts of strange things.


--Wash cloths that can apparently hold 15 gallons of water.

--Pans that can make the perfect brownie.

--Some thing that looks like a torture device that can make awesome spaghetti

--A kitchen that can clean itself. (Well. I haven’t seen this yet. But I’d like one.)



My husband and I were intrigued by something called a Shed Pal.

Confused? (I swear, it’s not a sex toy. I posted this picture on Facebook and people were like, “Um, why are you sharing a photo of your private toys?”)

A Shed Pal is supposed to help clean up the fur your pet sheds. The commercial (I'll share the link here and you'll see how misleading it is) shows the thing suctioning up fur effortlessly while the animal sits there with a baffled what-the-hell is going on expression. (I’d wonder the same. Especially if I was sitting there minding my own business and suddenly there’s a camera in my face and some chick is suctioning up my hair. It’s like, excuse me, shouldn’t we exchange numbers first?)

Anyway.

Tom and I found the Shed Pal at Wal-Mart. We plunked down 19.95 and eagerly took it home to try on our cat Max. Who sheds a lot. And by a lot I mean our brown couch will turn orange after he sits down on it for awhile.

So we find Max and he’s in the middle of giving himself a bath. He sees Tom taking the Shed Pal out of its packaging and pauses mid-lick. He gives us a look like, “WTF?”

“We’re going to vacuum up your fur,” Tom told him. And honestly, that statement would have scared me, too. That’s like someone saying, “Hey. I’m going to vacuum your leg hair.” Or, “It’s time to have a bikini wax.”

Max, because he’s a cat, just blinked at us as Tom started brushing his fur to loosen it. He likes this. His eyes started to close in ecstasy and he got the same expression I get whenever I consume chocolate. Mmm, chocolate. You know what sounds good? A Boston Cream donut from Dunkin Donuts.

But back to the story.

After Max’s fur was brushed Tom brought over the Shed Pal. He switched it on and this small whirling sound filled the room. Actually, it didn’t even fill the room. Maybe a couple of inches of it. And then Tom brought the thing towards Max because it’s supposed to vacuum all the loose fur so it doesn’t wind up on your furniture, floors, you, and other places where cat fur should not be.

Well.

I guess Shed Pal forgot the promises that it had on the commercial because the suction SUCKED. Or, in this case, it didn’t suck. It had the tiniest suction known to man and struggled to inhale an itty bitty piece of Max’s fur. For awhile it spun around and around on the opening before finally entering the chamber. It took about five minutes for it to do so. It didn't groom at all.

At this point Tom was crushed because the commercial LIED to him. (He was seriously excited about the Shed Pal. He was like, “Wow, neat, now we won’t have to deal with Max’s fur everywhere!” And at that moment, he realized, crap, we WILL have to deal with Max’s fur everywhere.”)

So in the end, we made a vow to never purchase those Made for TV things ever again.

Unless it’s very cool, like a gun that shoots piranhas. (That’s from Tom. And yes, that gun was in Despicable Me and Tom thinks it’s one of the coolest things EVER..)

Or if it’s something that can shut the children up for an hour so we can have a conversation without being interrupted. (Yes. I get there is something called a television but that doesn’t always work. Maybe something like a virtual Mary Poppins will be invented and Mary will be like, “Feed the birds, lalala, and a spoon full of sugar..” I’d buy that.)

So have you ever bought a Made for TV item? If so, did it work?