Hurricane Fur Wizard will give you “bad fur day”

​CAT OWNERS who are always looking for products to deal with their cats' shedding might have seen or heard about the Hurricane Fur Wizard by now.

The way it is advertised, the Hurricane Fur Wizard seems like a dream come true as it does away with expensive lint rollers and refills and it looks so easy to use. The main product is this big reusable double-sided lint brush that one dips in a self-cleaning base to remove collected fur. The manufacturer added a travel-size version in the package. At online shop Lazada, the Hurricane Fur Wizard retails from P385 to over P600, depending on the supplier.

For the purpose of this review, the kit I bought from Lazada cost P474.

Hurricane Fur Wizard complete set.

I immediately unboxed the Hurricane Fur Wizard because God knows how much fur it needs to remove, thanks to the diva house cats. But the excitement to use it right away didn't even last five minutes because the second I dipped the brush into the base, it got stuck!

I didn't want to be easily disappointed, so I half blamed myself for not reading the instructions that might have told me not to dip a clean brush into the base, the walls of which are covered with the same material as the brush. But, wait, there are no instructions whatsoever. In fact, the package stated that using it is as easy as 1-2-3: swipe to clean, dip into base, and remove fur from brush.

No amount of nudging, twisting and pushing could get the brush out of the self-cleaning base. Soon, the plastic handle separated from the brush as one of its prongs inside snapped! By now, I was completely aware that I bought a lemon like a real schmuck.

To successfully pry the Hurricane Fur Wizard brush off its self-cleaning base, I used a not-so-elegant solution: chopsticks. I squeezed a piece of bamboo chopsticks in between the lint removers (that line the side of the base) and the brush on both sides to loosen their grip of one another. The trick worked and I was able to slide the brush out, though I had already lost confidence that this product would even do half the work.

"Meow! I don't know why this product thinks it's a wizard? Don't give me this for Christmas or any occasion."

​Still, I took this newfangled fur and lint remover where I knew there's always a lot of cat hair (the headboard) and rubbed the brush against it. I must say it did a decent job, but it got stuck again inside the self-cleaning base when it was time to clean it. Later on, I decided to junk the poorly designed self-cleaning base and just keep the brush. I used a comb instead to tediously clean the brush after use. After all, the manufacturer didn't really explain how to remove fur from the self-cleaning base.

“One dip in the self-cleaning base removes pet hair from the Fur Wizard lint brush,” the box states.

“The reusable brush that picks up fur and lint with ease,” it added.

I can appreciate the reusable brush, but not the self-cleaning base. This combo doesn't work. Together, they make the Hurricane Fur Wizard hard to use. If you must use muscle and brawn to make a simple product like a lint remover to work as advertised, then you'd be better off picking up an old-fashioned lint roller than the Hurricane Fur Wizard.  -- AJ Buelva