Warthog said:
Watched the "Dragon's Den" the other night, where people desperately try and impress obscenely rich folk to get investment in their product and inthe process get torn to shreds
.
However, one product caught my with our planned South America trip next year, when we plan to do a fair bit of camping:
http://www.orikaso.com/
These are all flat packed, easily assembled, re-useable camping crockery and they often have multiple uses, so have a peak if your planning a trip and can't even fit a spare earplug in you panniers!
We bought one set of these when we arrived in BC in at the end of June and have used them pretty much every day since then, travelling round Western Canada and down to Arizona.
Good points:
Shape/packability - obviously
. They weigh nothing and you can always squeeze them in without displacing something else as they aren't rigid when they're flattened and can slide between odd shaped things in the panniers.
Plates/Bowls - as mentioned above the plates have creases that aid pouring and can be set up to be more or less dished, depending on how sloppy your meal is! The bowls don't look very substatial but they will hold hot soups etc. as long as you don't overfill them.
Cutting board - we found the plates dead handy for providing a clean surface for cutting up food on.
Bad points:
Press Studs - on the whole they do the job but only just. The more you use the plates the easier they are to bend and ours still have trouble staying closed. Better to use the bowls if your meals going to be sloppy! Also we had two press studs fail within the first couple of weeks
(fortunately replaced at a different outlet 1000km from where we bought them). I would say they need to come up with a better/simpler fixing method.
Mugs - crap
. We tried to use ours for a month before we threw them away. One broke (press stud) and the always leaked if you over filled them (mark is impossible to see in the dark) and they barely hold anything anyway. Replaced with 2 12oz stacking mugs from Canadian Tire(about C$1).
Heat - No insulation so you better either have something to wrap it it if it's hot or have some form of table (pannier or whatever) to rest it on. Also they become a bit softer when hot and you can easily slop food out (esp sauces - curry etc) if you're not careful.
Overall we would recommend them simply because they're so much easier to carry around than regular plates/bowls if you're tight for space (isn't everybody on a long trip?). Plus you can amuse your camping neighbours by assembling them and getting them to try the same without instructions (oh the fun and laughs we have round a campfire!
)
Simon & Fiona
