Kikkerland Brown Bear Zip & Flip Travel Pillow
Overview
| Rating |
🐻🐻🐻🐻🐻 |
|---|---|
| Year Purchased |
2017 |
| Years of Service |
6 |
| Can I buy it? |
Yes, but $$$ |
Every time I went to the airport, I saw people walking around with a pillow hooked around their neck. I started to think, should I have a neck pillow too? Will I be more comfortable?
For years I eschewed the neck pillow. I would bring my tiny camp pillow. Or for winter trips, I would have my Uniqlo ultralight down jacket (coming soon to a blog near you) that comes with its own stuff sack, and turn my jacket into a pillow! That was the best solution.
Until I went to Bermuda for Thanksgiving in 2016. At JFK LaDona purchased a neck pillow by Kikkerland that blew my mind. It was a cuddly foam beanbag whale. But when you unzipped his belly, additional fabric dropped out. You shook all the beans into the new fabric, stuffed the whale inside the zipper, and now you had a neck pillow. MAGIC.
I was already amazed by the ingenuity of this pillow/plush design. Imagine what happened when I found out it comes in bear.
Of course, Michael bought the bear pillow for me. Our first trip with the bear was to California that January. Michael competed in a cup tasting competition for Blue Bottle employees in SF. I joined for a weekend jaunt and then we moved on to Chico. Michael won, btw.
The bear has come along not just on my plane trips ever since… I’ve brought him on my van relays and camping trips. In the move from P-ville to SYR, my little camp pillow completely disappeared. So for the next four years, the bear became my camp pillow. Bear-mode makes a fine camp pillow.
On my very first plane trip after the pandemic started, Thanksgiving 2021, the bear snagged on a sharp edge in a restroom stall from either a toilet paper dispenser or waste bin. How did restroom stall fixtures with sharp edges pass QC? The snag left him with a tiny hole where he has been leaking the little styrofoam beans. I need to stitch that hole up.
Can you buy the bear (or whale or penguin or log) still? Yes, but… The current price is overly inflated. When we bought it I’m sure it wasn’t more than $25-$30. But the listings now are $50! If you really need a combination neck pillow-plush toy let me know. I’ll see what I can do when I’m traveling in August. They’re supposedly going for €35.
If you really need a neck pillow, this little foam beanbag number might not be it. But if you need a CUTE neck pillow… He’s your bear.