Aug 10th, 2007
Cool gear from Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City
At Poppa P’s invitation I headed downtown to check out the Outdoor Retailer summer market show at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City. It’s obvious but this is definitely a place for all things sports, outdoor, athletics, recreation and travel. I got there early and there were still tons of people.
My goal in going to Outdoor Retailer was to check out cool new gear, snap some photos and pick up some schwag! Well I have to say that I accomplished all of my goals and want to run down some of the unique, cool gear I saw. I’m sure there were tons of cool things that I missed because I only spent about two hours at the show, so if I don’t mention your products I am in no way saying your products aren’t cool, I just didn’t get over to check them out. So here’s my list of cool gadgets from this summer’s Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City.
Swiss Army’s “World’s Largest Pocket Knife,” according to Guinness Book of World Records.
After drooling over this pocket knife that isn’t really a “pocket” knife — unless you’re Paul Bunyan, the company rep proceeded to show me some of Swiss Army’s newest knife designs including the Ranger series they are promoting; nice looking knife, a bit of a move away from the traditional Swiss Army design, but still a very nice looking knife. (The Swiss Army logo is the release button of the locking blade, how cool is that?)
After looking at the Swiss Army knives, I came across Zing and their ZeeBeez toy. This is cool and although it took a couple tries to get the hang of how it worked, the guys at Zing sent me off with a ZeeBeez. Zing is a toy company with some cool, catchy little toys. Needless to say their toys would keep me occupied for a little while.
Being the owner of several iPods and one who gets a kick out the third-party iPod accessory industry Pelican and h2o Audio both have cool, rugged outdoor-proof iPod cases. Although I have to admit h2o Audio’s is cooler because it’s actually waterproof down to ten feet, and at Outdoor Retailer they announced the first waterproof iPod case for the 2nd generation iPod Shuffle. Ron told me he would hook me up and I think it’ll be cool to go swimming and listen to toons — oh yeah, h2o Audio also sells waterproof earphones (I didn’t get a picture of them).
The iS2 comes with an arm band which Ron didn’t mind modeling for me even with his colleagues razzin’ him.
Pelican’s iPod case. Although it isn’t waterproof, it sure looks rugged and I was told it could withstand upwards of 200+ pounds of pressure, yeah, that’s pretty rugged if you ask me! And just like the iS2 it has a built in water-tight headphone jack. The Pelican is a one-size-fits-all iPod case.
Well I think I’ve put enough stuff into this one post for now. I have more pictures that I’ll put into part two of this post later today or tomorrow.
