Just when we though we had it all figured out with the Littermaid product line, LM500, LM900, LM900 Mega, LME9000 Elite Mege, LME9000 Elite Mega Ultimate Edition, etc etc etc.... Now Littermaid is pulling one out of the Coca Cola playbook.  I guess it is human nature to want to put your "stamp" on something, to improve something that obviously needs improving, OR does it?  Anyone remember when "new coke" came out?  Surely none of those highly paid marketing experts and scientists weren't 100% sure that this was a far superior product than the old 100 year old recipe.  After all, what did they know about marketing, let alone chemistry back in the old days?

About 5 yrs ago, Littermaid, the dominant player in the automatic self cleaning litter box market, decided that they would blow the world away with a new "advanced" litter cleaning machine with more features than ever seen before that (to read the claims on the box) one could only conclude that this thing would completely eliminate the worry of litter box scooping, like some gadget out of the Jetsons.  I can hear the robot voice now, "Litter Box cleaning cycle commencing....sanititizing cycle initiated....odors eliminated....litter box cleaning cycle complete...".  This machine looked very sleek, with sexy new lines and color schemes, and with a name that anyone would associate with the top of the line product.  ELITE.  This machine, to look at it, made the old workhorse LM900 look like a car made in the old Soviet Union.  It even had a built-in ionic air cleaner, reminding me of that $500 gizmo I got years ago from Sharper Image, the "Ionic Breeze".  Now that thing could blow away some oder, it would grab those stinky cat exhaust molecules right out of the air and strangle them into inert specs of nothing.  Wow, how did they get one of those built into a litter box?   The Littermaid giant had been silent for so long, now it had spoken, striking certain fear into the competition.  Litter-Robot, Cat-Genie, Purrforma....prepare to be eliminated by the superior self cleaning litter machine!  Or not....

Now, to be sure, a lot of engineering when into the Littermaid Elite boxes.  Picture 3-D CAD models showing the rake move and deposit virtual waste into the virtual tightly sealed waste receptacle.  Computer modeling so advanced that it leaves nothing to chance, 99.9% reality.  Well guys, that is the biggest 0.1% that I've ever seen.  It reminded me of the old bugs bunny cartoons where Daffy Duck would forget that he could actually fly and go "splat" on the ground.  The obvious element missing in this case is that I honestly don't think anyone from the ivory tower thought to put a cat in this thing and asked him to "drop the deuce" to see what would happen.  Seems to me like one of the things one might want to do before investing a million bucks in injection molding tooling and getting those factories in China all excited with big production orders.  Or, at least they could have done some more sophisticated computer modeling, and made the cat poop sticky and let it be placed in all corners of the box, and let some of those clumps just be HUGE.

Ok, so none of that apparently happened, and what we got was the a very nice looking, expensive litter appliance that like a car begins to lose value rapidly as soon as you drive it off the lot.  Having learned nothing from 10 years of experience selling Littermaid boxes, and countless product reviews of the old workhorse LM900, the Littermaid Elite, was categorically worse in almost every way compared to its predecessor, with the single exception of the removable rake.

Here are some of the standard complaints about the original Litttermaid:

• Motor too loud
• Too much space between rake and bottom
• Waste receptacle too small
• Motor not strong enough and not reliable

The Littermaid Elite was louder, had more space between the rake and litter pan bottom, used the same waste receptacle, and had a weaker, less reliable motor.  But hooray for the ionic air cleaner!!  As far as I can tell, this was a red light that came one to tell you to go buy a real ionic air cleaner for $500.  But hold on now, the important question is "Does it clean the litter better?".  NO.  In fact it almost every way a device that is made to separate clumped solids from granular material, it was inferior in every way.

Ok, we get it, the LME9000 Elite was like new Coke.  Now, aside from the New Coke blunder, Coca Cola is still the #1 brand in the world, so it's generally not bad practice to emulate their product marketing strategy.

Enter......drum roll....... "Littermaid Classic Series!"  What??  Yes, the new versions of Littermaid are like modern retro versions of that old "made in the soviet union looking" LM500 and LM900 Mega.  Ionic air cleaner....Gone.  New metal rake....Gone.  Sleek lines...Gone.  This thing does have new lines, so it's more like a Toyota now, simple and functional.  Basically it's the same as the old original version except with a removable rake.  The model LM680 has been available in Walmart for the last year or so, now the LM580 is available at some online retailers like Amazon.com.  We still await the Littermaid LM980, which is the "mega" sized version.  These units tout a "stronger, more reliable" motor.  Thanks already, that's like saying "This new improved car will go uphill under its own power!"   All we ever wanted in the first place was a machine that would do the job and not break after 30 days of use.  Well, sarcasm aside, we may have it.  The Littermaid LM980 may very well have the right blend of price, reliability and performance to be worth trying.  It still uses the puny littermaid receptacles though, so be sure to get a LitterWorks litter disposal system for it!