So for our first edition of “what shiny new cool thing did we find at Outdoor Retailer”, I present to you the Matador Pocket Blanket. This one should take pages and pages to explain, so it’s like a blanket that fits in your pocket and stuff, DONE! I know this is like the best review ever.
Ok back to seriousness, we took it out on a nice little day hike and took the opportunity to play around with it. So it is in fact a blanket that fits in your pocket but do not let the simplicity of this handy little tool escape you. For something that folds up to about the size of a bandanna you have a 44 inch by 63 inch blanket that deploys quickly and most importantly has a genius stich pattern that helps you fold it up fast (sounds dumb maybe but we have all wrestled with maps).
So the factory says it is water resistant and that is true, you could probably use it as a quick rain guard until you can get to shelter, although then we poured water into it to see if we could carry some there was a steady drip. The steady drip is not necessarily a bad thing when you think about a sand water filter or all of that cool survival stuff. From what I felt playing around with it is it is semi puncture resistant although I would be weary with rocks and abrasives, nor would I play “catch knife”. Now the corners are “weighted” with what I could tell were washers;. Unfortunately these did not weigh down the fabric very well with the steady wind we had going, There are no grommets only loop holes at the four corners for tying down. Lastly the fact that it folds into its own pocket makes it a light and easy to carry item for your pack or person.
Personally I really like the Matador Pocket Blanket, not only because the people who sold them to us were really cool. I see a ton of applications form backpacking to a day at the beach and it is a great drop cloth to keep you from losing your gear, or a nice table cover (think park bench). It could do litany of cool outdoorsy survival stuff. So yeah, I am defiantly a fan and suggest picking one up and playing around with it, especially since the price point comes in under thirty bucks.
