Product Review...Eureka "The Boss" Power Plus Vacuum

 Whew. That's a long title, not just for a blog post but for a vacuum cleaner.

  A few years ago, before Dyson-mania took over the world and introduced "cyclonic action" into everyone's lexicon, I splurged and bought some fancy-pants Hoover vacuum with 3(count them, 3!) reusable filters and a supposedly awesome pet brush feature that was designed to eliminate all evidence of the pair of Black Labs that run my household, and whose sole purposes in life are to shed and steal my bed covers. The pet brush sucker-upper attachment never really impressed me but dang, that thing picked up everything in its path and then some! So it was a truly mournful day when my Hoover decided that it's molded plastic casing really didn't need to stay in one piece and just sort of fell apart, roller brush over there, wheels over here. After many layers of duct tape and a few years later, it finally just sort of sighed and decided that its vacuuming days were over.

 I didn't want to get rid of my Hoover, but it went to the curb and I went to Wal-Mart to find its successor. Considering I now lived in a place with mostly hardwood floors and a few area rugs, I figured I could get by with a cheaper, less hearty vacuum. I found a few under $100 and being an intelligent, Consumer Reports kind of girl, I immediately ignored all the information on the signs and went for the one that had the cutest color combination. Tah dah! The Eureka "The Boss" Power Plus vacuum! I bought it, brought it home and assembled it (I lie....my kid helped me assemble it because I stink at following instructions) and went to attack the blobs of Black Lab fur stuck to my red area rug.

 The pros: this vacuum makes an impressive amount of noise, enough to make one of your dogs run for their life and hide under the one piece of furniture that will provide her the least amount of protection: in this case, the coffee table. This may just be my experience though and your dog may have more intelligence than my less-than-genius Lab.

  The cons: this vacuum couldn't pick up a hooker in Amsterdam, never mind a dust bunny. Pet fur will congregate and laugh at you as you try to run over it, again and again, in hopes that maybe you just aimed wrong the first time. Dirt scurries under the roller brush and sprays onto your shoes. Any wayward pebble, piece of Lego, or God forbid, something metal like a paperclip will clang around in your Eureka and sound like a grenade in a foxhole. The power cord is woefully short and the plug will invariably get tugged out of the electrical outlet, whip around the corner and lay at your feet next to the fur blobs. Oh, and in case you're still trying to get this thing to perform, don't bother leaning it back to get under a chair or sofa, because once you lean it back, the canister pushes down on the power button, shutting the damn thing off.

 I can't for the life of me figure out why this vacuum is called The Boss, let alone why Eureka tacked on the clearly misleading "Power Plus" moniker. The best use of this machine is as a dog deterrent to my bedroom, where I park it in the doorway to scare off Miss Genius. Lesson learned: cheap vacuums suck. Or don't, as the case may be.