My feet have been described by everyone around me as cartoon like. I mainly took this as a compliment and in fact strutted a little bit at the thought of it, showing off my feet every chance I got.
At one point I even took to pointing at things with my toes instead of my fingers to ensure everyone got a chance to marvel at my Betty and Veronica type feet. Betty and Veronica were hot. Cartoon feet were hot. Ergo, I was hot.
And then one night at dinner the fella commented on my cartoon feet. Just as I was about to pass the gravy with my right foot, I heard something about Fred Flintstone.
FRED FLINTSTONE? People were referencing FRED FLINTSTONE and not the hot Archie comic girls when they said I had cartoon feet? This changed everything.
Frankly I knew I had wide, square, unattractive feet. That's why it was so exciting to think everyone around me was so stupid they couldn't see it. They thought I had the slender foot of a rich, snotty, dark haired vixen who starred in her own Double Digest.
To make matters slightly worse I not only have square feet, I have the feet of a highly ranked African distance runner. Someone who has trained by running through the thorn and rock filled bush for decades, completely barefoot.
My heels and toes have thick, hard calluses with enough dead skin poking out of them that scraping my feet through a pair of leggings is as horrifying as the sound of nails on a chalkboard, my feet catching and pulling on every fibre of the material all the way down. There are certain rugs in my house I can't even walk on for fear my feet will snag them like super powered velcro and I'll be stuck on the rug forever.
This is how I imagine my feet.
These are my actual feet.
It used to be that this medieval device was the tool of choice for those of us with farmer feet.
A razor on the end of a stick. The callus shaver.
And if you leave it in the bathroom cabinet long enough it'll even turn into a rusty razor blade. The idea is you carefully level the razor blade with your heel and then ... start swishing it across your heel as quick as you can, shaving off all of the dead skin in the process. You just keep doing it until you get too queazy to do it anymore. You'll think you did a good job until you realize you've shaved off all of your skin and you're unable to walk for 3 days.
Having the cast of Duck Dynasty shoot at your heels with their favourite 12 gauge seems more reasonable.
Which brings me to my product review. (I went out and bought the thing myself because I was genuinely curious about it ... I wasn't paid to write this review and no one gave me any free product.)
The Emjoi MicroPedi. I passed it a couple of times in my local pharmacy but never bought it because I wasn't convinced it would work and it's not cheap. At Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada it's $49.99.
So when I walked past it last time and saw it was on sale for $29.99 I held my breath and grabbed it. I could handle wasting $30. Not $50. So imagine my surprise when they rang it up and it came up as the original price, $49.99. I misread the price. It wasn't on sale. But it was too late now. I was attached to it. It was mine.
The Emjoi Micropedi is a battery operated foot sander. So a hypercharged emery board. The unit has a tube of sandpaper that sands your feet by spinning around at a ridiculous rate.
In the box you get the device, an instruction booklet and a completely and totally useless plastic brush thing.
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This is the business end of the device.
It runs off of 2 AA batteries and you can buy replacement sanders for it, including finer and extra coarse ones.
This is my heel before. And I have to tell you. It's actually looking pretty good. But you can see that I'm not the owner of beautiful heel skin. I have wrinkles on the bottom of my feet just like a baby. A baby elephant.
The instructions say to turn on the foot sander and run it over your skin for no longer than 3 seconds in one place. So I did that.
I did it again.
And again and again and again. It took about 15 minutes for me to get my feet to where I was happy with them. So it wasn't finished in the seconds that the box claims. Mind you, they probably weren't counting on Fred Flintstone buying their product.
It was amazingly easy to use and dare I say, kindda fun. Really fun in fact, because it worked. This is after one use.
Cleaning
That's what the little useless brush you get is for. Throw it away, it's stupid.
The device itself is water resistant so you can rinse it under water.
The sanding roll is removable so I just popped mine out and brushed it the remaining dead skin with an old toothbrush the rinsed it under water.
It's not the same as getting a pedicure, because obviously no one is nipping your cuticles, pulling your toes or massaging your calves, but the result is pretty good. Plus there's the bonus that you can do this whenever you have a second and you don't have to wait for an appointment.
Which brings me to my next point. Who is this sort of device for? Well. For people like me who imagine they're gonna get pedicures but never do. Or people who always get pedicures (Veronica for example) but want something to do little touch ups in between them.
So basically it's for everyone.
Do I recommend the Emjoi MicroPedi? Does Fred Flintstone wear a dress?
Rating:
Drawbacks
The reason it didn't get 4 stars is because of the cost of the unit and the replacement sanding rolls.
Take a look at your Battery Operated Foot Sander options on Amazon here.
If your feet are anything like mine, buy one. You'll love it. Yabba Dabba Doo it right now.
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Kim from Milwaukee
After I got my safety razor I started using that on my heels....it doesn't shave off the good skin like I thought it would, just the dead stuff. And quarterly pedicures are a lovely luxury, especially since I'm terrible at cutting my toenails without getting in-growns.
By the way, people with dead skin on their heels don't have sweaty feet. The uric acid in sweat is also in many foot creams, so if your feet sweat they naturally stay callous-free, like my ex hubs feet. So there's that.
I would think putting on the brakes in the Flintstone mobile would wear off the callouses.....
ally
I just gotta tell you that hubby tells me all the time that I have Fred Flintstone feet. Maybe we should start a support group? Before I met him, I thought my feet were cute....apparently not.
Dan
Edit - just saw your mention of her up top...skimmed too quickly.
But still! How are we to know if we should buy this thing, or just spend the small extra amount and go to Thailand???
Dan
Didn't we see a a pond in your backyard in a photo somewhere? 56 posts and nobody has brought up Fish Pedicure or the fact that you just need some of those Thai fish? And come to think of it, you didn't even mention FP. What the hell kind of foot grooming review is this?
Karen
You made me choke on my sandwich Dan. ~ karen!
LazySusan
LOVED the mushroom and dandelion! I have nice, slender feet and long toes, including a second toe that's as long as my little finger and a good half inch longer than my big toe. I must be a super Princess! When I was a teen and shopped for shoes with my size 7.5 AAA feet with a AAAA heel, when a salesman took off my shoe before slipping on the one I was going to try, the minute he saw my long toes, he actually couldn't keep himself from laughing. He'd never seen such long toes, apparently. You'd think I'd have good balance as a result, but noooooooo. I can be graceful for about ten minutes, and then I'll trip over my own feet. Anyway, when I lived in Hawaii, rough feet weren't an issue. If you go to the beach on a regular basis, just walking from the car to where you plop yourself on the sand is enough to wear down any rough parts. But since moving to a rather dry part of California, I get cracked heels, to the point of being painful. I tried a heel grating device for awhile, but that didn't really do it. I then started to put something called Bag Balm (http://goo.gl/YIsJaI) on my feet and cover them with ankle socks when I got home, during dry season, and it works wonders. Bag Balm was invented to keep cow's udders from becoming chapped, but I've found it in CVS and Walmart where there are skin lotions, so it's popular for humans, too. I think it's mostly lanolin. I've had the same can for several years, because it doesn't take much. After a few days of treatment with the socks, you can cut it back to just once or twice a week for maintenance. I go barefoot all day long, now that I'm retired, and find the Bag Balm to be a great solution for me. I don't go barefoot out in the dirt, though. My mother had that nail fungus that is shown in a current ad on this page, and it's pretty awful. They have medication for it, now, but I don't want nail fungus, period. Blech. The sander is a great device, and I'd be interested had I not already found a solution that works for me.
Maria
If the roll of sandpaper slips onto some kind of holder (think toilet paper), then couldn't you fashion replacement sandpaper covers by cutting a sheet of sandpaper and using silicone as an adherent where the two edges meet? Isn't silicone rubberized? I've peeled it off of stuff really easily. Just a thought. Perhaps Karen can make one and video tape it for you folks :)
Suzan
My daughter in law is the first person to tell me that I had Fred Flintstone feet. Then someone said I had troll feet. My granddaughter mentioned that the Hobbits have feet like mine. These are some bad ass feet I have! I think I need this device. If they have it at Bed, Bath and Satan, I will finally be able to use a coupon and buy it. Thanks for the "demo"!!
Nancy
I love mine too! Except I paid $19 when it was on Groupon. Works great.
Mondo | I bake he shoots
yeah, I'd be down for a way cheaper price. looks cool, but $50? absolutely not!
Karen
I know. But I have to say I'm glad I accidentally bought it for $50, lol. Apparently Costco carries it for $299. ~ karen!
Karen
Clearly. Not a deal at Costco, lol. Actual price $29.99. ~ karen!
Valerie
This has been a fascinating post.
Be happy to have normal feet. Until about 80 years ago (when this practices fell out of favour and finally came to an end under Mao) most women in China were foot bound from 3 to 4 years of age onward - every day by their Mothers so that the finished adult result was a 3 inch foot at the end of each leg. Too small to run (away from brutality of various types) and too delicate to support weight...talk about problems with feet - those ladies had them.
The way you would like your feet to look?........there is something seriously wrong with the big toe on the pictured right foot. Hard to believe that those are your feet! And where did the neon orange polish come from? Hideous.
Absolutely nothing wrong with the way your "working feet" appear in the second picture.
Your amateur foot surgery was impressive.
There was a time when I had the same callus build up and decided measures had to be taken. I filed off the calluses with a long file that I usually use on wood (prior to the invention of these callus removing gadgets.)
Not wearing something on bare feet is the answer.
Here is the way to prevent this from occurring in the future:
In the fall and winter time - wool socks. 'Smart Wool' socks that I have heralded previously in your post column - expensive but good; won't shrink in the dryer. Over the socks when its cold out and without socks in the spring and summer Ugg slippers. The company doesn't advertise the fact but those slippers are machine washable and then air dry. The Ansley style (no ties - just a slip on) have a rubber sole on the bottom so you can wear them out gardening, in the work shop and even out on little chores around the neighbourhood.
My 2 cents worth this morning.
Kathline
Nothing wrong with Flintstone feet. We have them in my family and it's agreed that they're way cuter than the long, boney type. My husband referred to my feet as claws once, trying to tease me. I corrected him - not claws....PAWS! Who doesn't like paws? Wide, stubby, adorable!
Rondina
OK, they're duck-like. But look at the rest of you. Most of us would love to look like we were a got-it-together-twenty-year-old again.
Which Dremel have you tried? I have one about eight inches long with a small drum-sander on it that fits in the drawer with my hair dryer and brushes. The ideal time to use it is after a shower when your skin is are more pliable. There might be an ideal time for this new tool also. I'm recommending this one to my daughter who thinks the Dremel is stupid. She just turned 30, so isn't lavishing on the lotion for dry skin yet.
Stephanie
Hahahah - we share the same feet - the prettier-looking first pic though. My ex-husband used to call me Fred Flintstone feet all the time. They weren't calloused or anything (thank you regular pedi's), but it was the shape of them. He said my toes looked like they were perfectly chopped off at the right angle (no long second toe for me) and they are all chubby little things and the top of my foot is rounded .... yup thanks Fred!! Did you notice I said "ex"?
Shirley
Okay, whose deck is that? I know it's not yours because you could have had that deck sanded and either stained or painted before breakfast, and that would be on one of your slow days. Or are your pre-Emjoi-ed feet to blame for all that peeling paint?
Suanne
Are those your feet "after" your in-home treatment, in the first picture, Miss Karen???? I've gone back and forth between the two pictures, several times, and they look.....quite....similar. (sans the dirt and mushoom) :)
susan w
My sister uses her Dremel on my 90 year old mothers toenails Hers is cordless. It is probably easier than doing it on your own feet. I wonder about a a small finishing sander as well.
The Emoji is 25$ on Amazon for battery operated and 55$ for rechargeable. (Someone may have already mentioned this - I didn't read through all comments.
zippy
Dremel has a pet nail grooming tool that my friend uses on her heels - it's cordless and easy to handle. The dog doesn't like it but she does!
frozenmama
And yeah, I meant emjoi. Not smiley faces.
frozenmama
Also, could we talk about the smell? Surely, I'm not the only one.
frozenmama
Not that I want to brag, but I purchased that gizmo and burned through one cartridge and almost a brand new.set of batteries on just one foot. Seriously. The sandpaper was almost smooth and I easily could have used significantly more grindage.
Now I'm looking at buying the more "extreme" refills: which aren't local here or cheap on line.
I don't love my emoji: but I think this is the "girly" version. I need industrial: bigger motor, plug in (not batteries) and ultra coarse grinder.
Janice
My heels look like yours...maybe worse. You actually have cute feet. Any freak with a foot fetish will post the pretty painted toe nails pic on their creepy website. Trust me, they will....you might want to start lurking foot fetish sites just so I can be proven correct. My question, oh Queen of everything wonderful....how long did the sand roll last? I saw the price of the refills on the Amazon link and my jaw dropped. Have you tried a belt sander?? I assume you have one of those already.