I just found a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser in my mother’s cleaning closet and became interested in it. The product is pretty cool: it’s a hard foam that is composed of interconnected stands of the hardest commercially-available plastic: melamine. Melamine is interesting in this application because it is traditionally known as the main ingredient in formica as well as the stuff that make up a whiteboard.

The Magic Eraser, marketed by Proctor and Gamble, is actually a product from BASF called Basotect. Apparently, it also has good sound insulation properties.

One report mentioned that the substance is execelent at removing the polish from glossy paint. I performed a quick experiment by very lightly dragging a dry Magic Eraser on the surface of a glossy photograph. The photograph had very obviously lost its finish in the area with really tiny scratches. I then wet a tip of the Magic Eraser and gave a quick back and forth on a different area of the photograph: the eraser removed the gloss and the pigment of the photograph. It is pretty incredible how sharp the microfiber must be.