Last year the critter catcher went viral...
...with over 146 million people wondering if this was the solution to their creepy crawly fears.
But does it actually capture the critters as well as it claims.
Hi I'm Carl.
And I'm Chelsea.
We're testing out inventions to see if they live up to expectations.
We're here to find the answer the most important question.
It's cool...
...but does it really work?
We got a big box of critter catchers and decided to test them out.
First of all, I think the critter catcher is unnecessary.
I think that if there's a bug in your house...
...just grab a paper towel and grab it like that and throw it out the door.
It also won't be able to grab all sizes of bugs.
Smaller bugs will just slide right through the bristles and larger bugs won't fit.
Whenever there's a bug my apartment, there's an entire game plan as to how we're gonna get it out.
But unfortunately the plans never really work because the bug always escapes...
... or we just get too scared to get too close to it.
So I think this is the perfect solution to it and I think it's gonna work.
The inspiration for the spider catcher comes from my son Robert, who has a terrible fear of spiders.
And of course, I had a problem of, as soon as he spotted an insect, I had to go up and rescue it.
Anyway, I went down to the shed.
I was always one for making ideas as you can see behind me here.
I'm always tinkering away, coming up with crazy things to make.
I just love making things.
I came up with this bristle head so it wouldn't damage the spider.
It's very gentle on them, and it would surround them, and it holds them...
...nice and gently in there until you get them outside.
Of course, there's only one way to see if the critter catcher actually works.
Oh my god.
And that's to try it on real critters.
So we've got a bag full of tiny crickets here.
And what we're gonna do is try to get one out at a time to see a controlled test...
...to see whether or not the critter catcher can grab them.
Okay, so Chelsea, this is all you. Okay?
Woah, that's too fast.
That's too fast!
Okay, there's one.
Oh my god, okay.
Put the lid on. Put the lid on.
It worked!
While we had just planned to catch one cricket at a time, things quickly got out of hand.
Oh god. Oh my god. Here we go!
Oh god, they're over here now!
Oh my god!
I think I have one.
See them?
I see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
So we were able to catch all of the crickets pretty efficiently, pretty quickly...
...and most importantly, in a very humane way.
But we did do it in a very controlled environment here in this kitchen...
...and these are very docile crickets that were raised in captivity...
...and they're not the wild big critters that we were really looking for.
So I think what we have to do is go out into the real world and catch some big creepy critters.
After the break we had deep into the wilderness... of Central Park.
So now we know these work in the home.
So we're here in Central Park to try these out in the wild.
You'll catch some critters.
Let's go.
It proved to be a lot more difficult to find bugs than we'd anticipated.
But we finally struck gold.
There he is.
Let it go.
You gotta let it go quicker.
You got him!
Got him!
He's free!
Yea and he's pretty contained. He's like what's going on.
Got him.
That's a successful critter caught.
So I didn't think it was gonna work on the smallest of bugs or the biggest of bugs.
But from what we tested today it caught everything that we tried.
I would definitely use this again.
I'm so afraid of bugs and spiders, so this is just the solution to my problem.
I almost had fun.
Almost.
No bugs were harmed in the making of this video.
This face mask is kind of gimmicky.
We want to find out if the magnetic effect is as intense as it appears in the original video.