Stainless steel… a male aphrodisiac if we ever saw one. If women bought men engagement rings, they’d be made out of brushed stainless steel instead of diamonds and gold. With that said, imagine a stainless cooler filled with ice cold beer.
Migrated from old site, first posted 3.15.01
After recently retiring an old steel cooler that had been in my family for eons and switching to an old plastic cooler, I came to a conclusion… my beer just wasn’t cold enough anymore. There is nothing I hate more than opening up a cooler that I just packed with ice the day before and finding my hand immersed in warm water. It was that morning I decided that I needed something new and improved, so I started my research. My cocktails were getting warm fast, so I needed something that would put vast amounts of information at my fingertips immediately, but since I don’t own an encyclopedia, I decided to use the internet.
I quickly came across the Coleman website, and there it was in all it’s beer chilling glory. The Coleman limited edition 54 quart stainless steel cooler (with a compass in the stock and the thing that tells time). This is the stuff alcohol induced dreams are made of. I ran down the list of features that included stainless steel hinges, a plastic coated bottom, a steel latch to secure contents, and get this, a 100 year warranty! Then- lo and behold, the feature I wanted to see most… it will keep ice cold for three days in 100 degree heat. I was sold no matter what the cost. Now the hard part, finding one.
I could not locate an online store that sold them and wound up driving 80 miles to a Coleman outlet store. It cost $100, so I figure that’s $1 for every year of the warranty, not bad in my book. I took it for a test drive that night, and three days later it was still full of the same two bags of ice, although the beer had been replaced a few times, and driving was out of the question. One of the cool (I swear I will not use this pun again) things about this cooler is that unlike plastic ones that claim to keep ice for extended periods of time, this one has thin walls so you can actually put a nice amount of drinks in it without having to deal with a bulky size. The downsides to this magnificent beast are the weight, the lack of a bottle opener mounted onto the side like the old ones used to have, and the fear that someone will steal it.
Overall I would definitely recommend this to any avid fan of drinking. And if you’re trying to find a way to explain it to the wife, you can use my excuse- “Think of all the money we’ll save in ice!”
Since the original posting of this review–when this was a rare find–the cooler has been spotted at almost every Costco, BJ’s, Wal-Mart and “store” in the country. It’s online at Amazon
