Claims to work well in your “home office kitchen.”

Our writer Go Hatori often finds himself purchasing products over the Internet that tread the fine line between amazing and grossly exaggerated. While more items fall in the latter category, he holds onto the hope that a diamond in the rough will get the attention it deserves.

This time, his search led him to the Cockroach Trap Sixth Upgrade Safe Efficient Anti Cockroaches Killer Plus Large Repeller No Pollute for Home Office Kitchen. The name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but is a rare case of both “Safe” and “Killer” being used to describe the same thing.

▼ You can call it “Cockroach Trap” for short

As you can see, the above promotional image has been heavily pixelated. That’s because Go found himself getting lightheaded at the sight of a half-dozen or so large cockroaches gathered in the clear tube prison of this trap. Although it really drives home the purported effectiveness of this product, it’s not recommended for those who are squeamish about roaches.

It’s an especially odd thing to see on the huge Chinese online clothing retailer Shein’s website where he purchased the Cockroach Trap for 815 yen (US$5.46). Go thought it’d be good to try out at the SoraHouse, which in addition to being extremely cheap, is also extremely old, dating back about a century.

It arrived in a box that was a little banged up. But since it’s just a roach trap and not a Rolex, that was hardly a deal-breaker.

Luckily, the main unit and packets of what Go assumed was insect bait, appeared intact.

The trap itself can be broken down into four parts.

On three sides of the unit are clear plastic doors that only open one way so anything that enters, won’t be able to leave.

Presumably in an effort to escape, the insects then move deeper into the clear plastic tube from which there is no escape. If all goes according to plan, this tube will become an eldritch nightmare of writhing futility.

Go tore open a packet of bait to set his trap with. Inside was a brown powder that had a slight seafood aroma to it.

He dumped it out into the main section of the trap and reassembled it.

He then placed the trap in the most humid corner of the house’s kitchen.

All that was left to do was wait.

Go had set the trap on 6 August and figured two months would be a good length of time to fill it to capacity. So, on 7 October, he returned to face whatever might be inside…

The trap was exactly where he left it in the kitchen and appeared completely undisturbed.

Our writer slowly crept toward it with his flashlight until he was close enough to see…

▼ NOTHING!

Well, not exactly “nothing” because inside the brown insect bait had taken on a grayish color, likely due to a layer of mold that had grown on top of it.

Upon closer inspection there were also a bunch of tiny, black, beetle-like insects wiggling around in all the mold and rotten bait.

▼ After all the fuss Go made about the promotional image, showing a bunch of bugs in a pile of filth didn’t seem appropriate here either so he pixelated this too.

It wasn’t nearly as horrifying as a barrel of cockroaches, but it was still quite nasty. Go also wasn’t sure if these bugs had entered the trap or were possibly born inside from something in the bait. He wasn’t even sure if they were so much “trapped” as they were simply not interested in leaving their grimy paradise.

As he sat in his moldy kitchen, looking at his even moldier roach trap, Go wondered what he would have done if it had actually been full of roaches. Come to think of it, why make a roach trap that leaves you with several live roaches in the first place?

It was a mysterious product anyway he looked at it.

Product link: Shein (Viewer discretion is advised)
Photos © SoraNews24
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