Bubba Keg
One of the photogs at work used to have this behemoth of a coffee/travel mug; it was less MUG and more STEIN, or BARREL. It carried enough coffee/tea/Coke/water/beer???/juice/drink for his entire day without refilling (restroom facilities not included, but when you're a guy in the field, with no toilet in the live truck, you can usually just unzip and let fly where cameras fear to tread, right?).
Recently he came in with a replacement, entitled The Bubba Keg. It was about the same size, and blue in color (not chroma blue, not blue with a lot of red, not purplish-blue, and not sky blue -- this becomes more important later in the story). He has added a tall straw courtesy of On The Run.
Since then I have seen Bubba Kegs in my local Targets: a 20-something oz. version, a 34-ounce version (designed to fit in a car's cup holder, but is it too tall for my 97 Jetta's cup holder with the ashtray removed?) and the original 52-ounce version. All are black. However, there are also "hot" or "chroma" blue, or blue with a lot of purple in it, versions of the 52-ounce version.
In my infinite (ha!) wisdom I've gotten curious and decided I've gotta have one. I am consuming (...) a lot of coffee, water, soda, diet soda, caffeine free diet soda, and such like once again at work and elsewhere. There's also, according to the Bubba Keg legends out there on the Web, much more reason to get one.
Pour in a hot drink, it stays hot for 3 hours!
Pour in an iced drink, it stays cold and the ice stays frozen for 12 hours!
Well, maybe the ICE doesn't stay frozen but you get the idea.
"Why don't you just buy a Thermos? Or something along those lines from Aladdin, one of their big competitors?"
....Hmm.... probably novelty. And the appearance of great strength. It's steel, or steel-looking. And all the Bubba Keg products have a great feature: the handles are COMPLETE "D" handles, instead of just being partial. A complete D lets you hook it to, say, a backpack, with a carabiner or other hook.
Googling the Bubba Keg brings up various things -- many that are not related to what I'm looking for. We also learn that Molson in Canada makes a "bubba keg" of a beer can that's 5 litres of Molson -- the beer version of a box of wine, kinda. There's also a rapper out there named Bubba Sparxxx. But there's no serious way out there to buy a Bubba Keg that easily, beyond those few units at Target.
BubbaKeg.com is under construction. The maker, IN ZONE's official web page featuring the Bubba line, says they're available at various chain stores, like Wal-Mart, Sports Authority, and others.
Today I actually deigned to try the Seekonk Wal-Mart. I had no REAL intention to buy one from the Walton empire, I just wanted to see how much I would save if I put my money in their wallet rather than buy one on the Internet. They had none, thank goodness. I even tried KMart and Sports Authority, and nothing. (About the time I arrived at Sports Authority tonight I realized, I'm a journalist, why couldn't I have had the sense to call all these places?)
Where the Bubba Kegs went: Wal-Mart used to have them, but rolled them back to clearance prices in August, according to a thread on The DIS Discussion Forums.
So my next move is on Froogle and eBay. Got any ideas for other places to try?
eBay reveals that there are four colors out there: lime green, hot pink/purple, sky blue, and neon orange, in the various sizes. Prices are very reasonable, until you bring the cost of SHIPPING into the picture. Including shipping, some prices can top $15. No thanks.
Do I want any of these colors? I would tend to prefer to stand out and not have blue -- because I really don't want to match my co-worker -- but ORANGE? Neon GREEN? Hot PINK? Hmm. There's no primary colors out there?
Pink would be just TOO gay. And wouldn't I get sick of neon green? Sky blue would be another blue to match the cow-orker, and would show dirt more, as would orange.
....I'll let you know what I pick once I've finished overthinking this. 8^)
Labels: Originally published
... Scribbled by Bill T ... 9/21/2005 10:39:00 PM ... 
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