Anyone got a gas-mask? (Mr Muscle Lemon Kitchen Cleaner)

Member Name: pandapaws

Product:	Mr Muscle Lemon Kitchen Cleaner
Date:	17/05/09 (154 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cleans well enough, often on low-price offers

Disadvantages: Stinks. Smells, Pongs. Hums.

I'm a bit of a price tart with cleaning products - I never buy the uber-cheap stuff, but I generally buy whatever brand is the cheapest but looks as though it will do the job. That was how I discovered Mr Muscle Kitchen Spray.

In my local Asda a few months ago, there was a fab deal with loads of top branded cleaning products on 2 for £1. Needless to say, I spent about £20 and stocked up on all sorts of necessities including 8 bottles of this stuff. I'm on my third now, so I've given it a fair go.

~The Brand~
Everyone must be familiar with the Mr Muscle brand...the weedy little guy in specs (who for some reason doesn't wear a t-shirt?) who can get the house spotless in an instant with help from his great cleaning products. Well, on looking properly on the bottle of this new spray, I'm guessing they've decided to have a bit of an image re-vamp as it shows a large bloke with loads of muscles wearing orange spandex. The jury is still out on whether that's an improvement or not!

~The bottle~
Quite unmissable, the actual container is bright yellow and the trigger spray is orange and white. There is a large green label with aforementioned 'hunk' on the front and the usual small (very small) print on the back. The nozzle has a square twist cap to it, which you can swivel around between 'ON' and 'OFF'. Slight complaint there in that it is very difficult to read which one you've selected as they are only very faintly embossed. Not a problem if you want to select 'ON' as you just move on if you've got the wrong one, but if you're looking for 'OFF' and you get 'ON'...

~The smell~
Within a few seconds of spraying this, I find the smell really overwhelming. So much so that I have to open the windows if I'm cleaning more than a very small area. I won't use it if the kids are in the kitchen as I don't like the idea of then breathing in such potent fumes. I find that if I'm having a thorough kitchen clean then it is just too strong - it doesn't stop me from using it, but it would be much better if it did have the nice lemon scent promised on the bottle rather than the 'bleach with a hint of chemical' aroma that it does have. It says on the back of the bottle: "Do not breathe spray. Use only in well-ventilated areas", so I suppose they're giving some warning, but I feel a headache starting if I'm working with it for a while even with the windows open, which surely can't be good. It sounds trivial, but it really does affect my use of the product as I feel that the headache must be telling me something, such as 'don't breathe in those fumes'!

~Anti-bacterial~
This is the essential word that I look for on the packaging of kitchen sprays, as I have two young kids and a husband who thinks that looking in the direction of the sink constitutes washing his hands. However, the manufactuerer doesn't make too much of a deal about this on the packaging, so I don't know whether or not it compares to other brands such as Dettol for the ability to kill the very worst germs.

~Does it work?~
Yes. It doesn't really do much different from other kitchen cleaner sprays that I've used, but it certainly does the job. I find it particularly good at removing greasy mess which some other cleaners can smear around, but Mr Muscle lifts it right off into the sponge. For normal mess it's sufficient just to spray and wipe, whereas dried in mess takes a little longer. I usually spray all the worktops at once (trying to avoid breathing for the duration!) then start wiping over the cleanest part first, giving the dirtiest areas around the cooker longer for the chemicals to penetrate the stains. It's also not too bad on the stainless steel dishwasher door, which some cleaners leave really nasty streaks on.

~What about on cooker hobs?~
Not so good on this front in my house. We inherited a halogen hob in this house, which combined with my rather poor cooking skills leave us with a lot of thoroughly baked on messy, crusty lumps on the hob. I spray whichever cleaner I'm using on on and leave it for a while, and this product does lift some of it off with the help of the scouring side of the sponge, but it rarely cleans it off fully so I tend to just wipe over and give a periodical thorough clean with Astonish gunk to get the heavy stuff off.

~Quantity~
As I said earlier, I bought 8 bottles several months ago and I have used just over 2 of these in 3 months although I have used other cleaning products as well as I keep finding half-used bottles around the house! Each bottle is 500ml which is a nice size to hold without being too heavy but not so small that you have to replace it every five minutes.

~Environmental~
This probably isn't going to win many green points. For those who understand such things, the list of ingredients includes:

Quaternary ammonium compounds, benzyl-C12-18-alkyldimethyl, chlorides (0.025%), Quaternary ammonium compounds C12-14-alkyl [(ethylphenyl) methyl] dimethyl, chlorides (0.025%). Also <5% non-ionic surfactants, perfume (they didn't pick a very nice one...maybe they should try the fragrance counter at Boots next time), Linalool, Citronellol and Disinfectants.

I haven't got a clue what most of that means, but it sounds like a bucket load of chemicals which are going to end up one way or another going down the plughole. I'm no tree-hugger, but I do sometimes wonder if quite as many un-pronouncables are really necessary in an everyday product like this. Furthermore, it seems a little wasteful to have a spray bottle that just gets thrown away after a few weeks - it would be more responsible if they could sell the bottles separately and then sell cheaper refill cartons.

~Skin~
As you'd expect of anything with so many non-organic ingredients in it, this doesn't exactly do wonders for your skin. I'm too lazy to wear rubber gloves every time I want to wipe the worktop down, but I always wash my hands after I've used this stuff as I find it does dry the skin out and leave a bit of a residue. In their defence, it does say on the bottle that you should avoid prolonged contact with the skin and wash and dry hands after use.

~Would I buy it again?~
At normal price, no way. If it was on 2-for-a-quid again, probably. The smell is by far the worst aspect for me, but other than that it does a good enough job and I'd buy it if it was cheap enough. Saying that, I can't wait to finish the remaining 5.5 bottles that I've got in the cupboard so I can get something a bit less pongy.

~Overall rating~
I've given this 2/5 stars. That might seem harsh for something that does the job adequately, and if it wasn't for the smell I'd have given it 4/5 as the only thing it doesn't do well enough is the hob. But the fumes are just too much for me to bear, so I'm knocking it down a couple of pegs on that basis. If other manufacturers can make things less potent, why can't Mr Muscle in his orange spandex?!

Summary: Makes me hate doing the jobs I hate even more!