So… how’s your winter so far? Presenting the poleaxe, the naganita, the fauchard of snow and ice scrapers: the Blizzerator. MCG gives this premium tool a timely review.
Here in the greater Detroit megalopolis each winter, cleaning ice and snow from vehicle windows is an almost daily ritual. And except for parking indoors, there is no trick to make it easier: All you can do is dig in and chisel. But it does help to have a good, high-quality scraper and snow brush.
Ordinarily, one might pay around three to ten bucks for a decent snow tool. However, the people at Blizzerator, LLC have taken the super-deluxe approach, offering a product in the $20-$30 range (retail at Amazon, $24.99). Now, $20-$30 is not a lot of money, but it is a lot of money for a snow tool. (Remember when banks and auto parts houses gave away pretty nice ones?) Is the Bilzzerator worth the dough? Let’s take a closer look.
The Blizzerator – 57 inches fully extended, approx. 3 lbs., high-impact plastic and aluminum tubing
As you remove the Blizzerator from the carton, you’ll feel like you got your money’s worth: Fully extended, it measures 57 inches long and has a hefty, pro-tool feel. If you ever need to beat a man to death with a snow brush, here’s your instrument. We haven’t fatigue-tested ours in that manner, but it appears to be soundly constructed from quality materials to last a good, long time.
When using the Blizzerator, the main sensation at first is one of overkill. The tool is so enormous, Halbard-sized, that you feel like you are waging medieval war against the snow and ice on your windows. And that’s not a bad thing at all, really. You can move a considerable amount of white stuff in a short amount of time.
One drawback of the generous handle length, however: Your hand is so far from the snow brush end that it feels a bit awkward, as though you have insufficient leverage. But the brush element has a pivot mechanism that you can lock at 90 degrees to the handle and then easily push or pull the snow instead of trying to swipe it away in an arc.
For light or close-in duty, the ice scraper detaches from the main handle via a spring-loaded lock button. The blade has a sharp, stiff edge, ideal for chiseling ice. You know how some scraper blades are really effective and others are kinda meh? This is a good one.
But the tool’s great hulking length (in three adjustable positions) does have its advantages. You can stand on a cleared portion of the driveway and reach all the way across the windshield and back window with ease, avoiding that trip into the snowdrift on the opposite side of the car. And you can stand far enough away from your work that you’re not brushing snow off the car and onto your overcoat and shoes. Which is nice.
The snow brush end features a slip-on protective cover that incorporates a high-quality squeegee. Super, except there appears to be no way to store the squeegee section on the tool when the brush is in use. This suggests to MCG that the two pieces are bound to get separated, and he’s going to lose the squeegee section eventually. He’s just hapless that way.
Is the Blizzerator for you? If you’re the sort who won’t be satisfied unless you have the biggest, baddest, trickest snow and ice scraper to he had, then yes: You’ll be wanting one. You know who you are. All the other car kids on the block will be green with envy.
But you know who really, truly needs a Blizzerator? Those of us with tall vans and 4×4 trucks in our fleets. With its long handle and generous surface area, this is the perfect snow tool for vehicles with large expanses of glass high off the ground. It takes a nearly impossible chore and makes it almost pleasurable (almost). Our Blizzerator will be living in the Motor City Garage shop truck, a one-ton Chevy van, where we know it will prove useful. It might even make this long, tough winter seem a tiny bit shorter.
Blizzerator LLC + Old Brookville NY 11545 + 516-353-4382 + info@Blizzerator.com
I don’t know, totally useless in the summer, unless you could use it as a throttle lock on a semi, or doubles as a cane. A piece of cardboard on the windshield always worked for me, but how trendy is that?
Heh, not sure what you mean. Do you lay the cardboard on before it snows, and then pull it off when you’re ready to go?
Yup, I know in this day and age it’s a little unorthodox, but it works. Same with frost overnight, that scraping is like fingernails on a chalk board to me. Shut wipers off with key halfway across, holds cardboard in place.
Garbage bags don’t absorb water and stick to the windshield like cardboard. Yes, you put it on the windshield when snow is predicted and just pull it off, leaving everything clean and ice free. How well it works depends on the amount of snow. Sometimes it’s too heavy to just yank off, but the snow doesn’t stick so it brushes off easily.
Also, putting it on it gives you an opportunity to remember to pull the wipers up off the windshield so they won’t stick. Since I don’t have a garage, I park the car on a big plastic tarp. Like the garbage bag, snow comes off it easily so it’s easier to shovel out.
It appears that this Blizzerator has a handle that sticks out at ninety degrees so you can put more effort into scraping. That’s good. It’s hard to apply leverage with a scraper when you’re stretching halfway across the car. The tool needs to be modified so that side handle can be screwed in on either side. That works better for left-handed and just prefer doing it that way.
I like the pivoting snow brush but but that’s a lot of mass hanging off the end and fairly tall at that. It appears to be top heavy, and would be hard to maneuver and to keep perpendicular to the windshield. Haven’t tried it personally though.
Your photo appears to show the handle in the fully retracted position. The collapsed length of 44″ is too big for my car. I need one 24″ or less. They need a Jr. version for people with compact cars instead of 4×4 trucks. I am presuming that a sizable portion of people who can’t afford a house with a garage are driving smaller cars.
Thanks for bringing this snow tool to our attention. I live in the South now so I don’t need this as badly as I once did but it still snows here in January. Fortunately, we’ll likely be back up into the 70s by mid-February.
I’ve repeated my comments on the manufacturer’s website.
I appreciate the self-defense potential. I won’t need my nunchucks when I leave the office late at night.
Hi Lisa, self -defense, you say. I can see it now, bunch of thugs approaching, situation looks grim, when the leader says, ” LOOKOUT, SHE”S GOT THE BLIZZERATOR, ,,,RUN!!!