It's hard for a gearhead like me to let go of a piece of really good equipment when it dies. It's even harder when there is nothing wrong with it. My old Bluet Turbo 270 camping stove finished its last canister this morning while making my coffee. There is no more gas for my stove. Ever.
Camping Gaz (or "campingaz" as they wanted to be known but no one could spell correctly, so they just let people spell it as two words), formerly Bluet, was a French company that made, among other product, backpacking stoves. Their most famous products were their little blue stoves that used little blue gas canisters. In earlier days, the stoves would strap to the canisters and puncture them to get fuel, leaving the stove attached until the canister was empty. The improved method was the addition of a self-sealing, threaded top to the canister that allowed the stove to be attached and removed as needed, making for a much more packable appliance.
I bought my 270 either during the summer before my senior year in high school or during the year off that followed. I can't remember. When I bought it, I had to light it with a match or a lighter since Bluet didn't make a piezo ignitor yet. A few years later, when they offered it as an accessory, I snapped one up, put it on and continued to happily use the stove. Its only moving part was the control knob. It allowed you to go from a barley-lit simmer to full-on volcano with extremely fine adjustment. It performed well in the wind, it had wide pot supports (important for vigorous stirrers like me), and it never, ever failed to light or gave me any problems.
A few years ago, Coleman bought a few European gear makers, including Bluet/Camping Gaz and Great Britain's Epigas. Coleman were then bought by Sunbeam -- yeah, the toaster folks. Sunbeam then fell on hard times, reorganizing themselves as American Household Inc. but still not doing so well. Then, in 2004, Jarden, the parent company of folks like Diamond matches and Bicycle playing cards, bought American Household and, just as you'd predict, all of American Household's holdings got reorganized, including and specifically Coleman.
Because the Gaz products competed directly with the Coleman's Peak line of stoves, the trusty old Bluets were redesigned (poorly) and relabeled as the "Twister" series (y'know, cuz they twist onto the canisters?). Federal regulations on shipping pressurized gas canisters changed slightly, causing manufacturers to have to retool to meet the regs, then the regs changed again. Gaz fuel started to be harder to find. Retailers started to limit their stock of Gaz products to just the canisters, eliminating the 270g canisters first, and then slowly getting rid of the 470s. Some larger retailers like Cabela's correctly predicted the direction Gaz/Coleman was going and pulled all the product from their shelves so that they wouldn't have to deal with customers who bought the stoves but then couldn't find fuel. And then came the last nail in Gaz' coffin: Coleman, who to this day hold a large stock of Gaz fuel in their Wichita, KS, warehouses, added a "hazard shipping charge" to the canisters that pushed the wholesale price of a single canister up over the retail price. In a matter of weeks, Gaz effectively disappeared from the American market.
There is nothing wrong with my stove. It works perfectly. I've taken it with me on trips in a dozen countries or more, on three continents. I've made meals on this stove that were better and more memorable than ones made in the comfort and amenity of my own home. There are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of these stoves out there in the world, no doubt in similarly perfect operating condition. The free market killed this stove. The needless buying and selling of companies, the mergers, the acquisitions, the money-can-correct-competition attitudes of folks in suits who never go camping killed this stove. This perfect stove. My very first camp stove.
(None of the "facts" above have been verified. I assembled the [ahem] history from a variety of accounts told to me as I looked for canisters on the web, in (what turned into several hours of) phone conversations, and at local and distant retailers. But it's a good story, I hope well-told, and it gives me a reason to be bitter about a wrong inflicted upon me (the loss of my favorite stove), so it's what I'm sticking with, truth be damned.)
Camping Gaz (or "campingaz" as they wanted to be known but no one could spell correctly, so they just let people spell it as two words), formerly Bluet, was a French company that made, among other product, backpacking stoves. Their most famous products were their little blue stoves that used little blue gas canisters. In earlier days, the stoves would strap to the canisters and puncture them to get fuel, leaving the stove attached until the canister was empty. The improved method was the addition of a self-sealing, threaded top to the canister that allowed the stove to be attached and removed as needed, making for a much more packable appliance.
I bought my 270 either during the summer before my senior year in high school or during the year off that followed. I can't remember. When I bought it, I had to light it with a match or a lighter since Bluet didn't make a piezo ignitor yet. A few years later, when they offered it as an accessory, I snapped one up, put it on and continued to happily use the stove. Its only moving part was the control knob. It allowed you to go from a barley-lit simmer to full-on volcano with extremely fine adjustment. It performed well in the wind, it had wide pot supports (important for vigorous stirrers like me), and it never, ever failed to light or gave me any problems.
A few years ago, Coleman bought a few European gear makers, including Bluet/Camping Gaz and Great Britain's Epigas. Coleman were then bought by Sunbeam -- yeah, the toaster folks. Sunbeam then fell on hard times, reorganizing themselves as American Household Inc. but still not doing so well. Then, in 2004, Jarden, the parent company of folks like Diamond matches and Bicycle playing cards, bought American Household and, just as you'd predict, all of American Household's holdings got reorganized, including and specifically Coleman.
Because the Gaz products competed directly with the Coleman's Peak line of stoves, the trusty old Bluets were redesigned (poorly) and relabeled as the "Twister" series (y'know, cuz they twist onto the canisters?). Federal regulations on shipping pressurized gas canisters changed slightly, causing manufacturers to have to retool to meet the regs, then the regs changed again. Gaz fuel started to be harder to find. Retailers started to limit their stock of Gaz products to just the canisters, eliminating the 270g canisters first, and then slowly getting rid of the 470s. Some larger retailers like Cabela's correctly predicted the direction Gaz/Coleman was going and pulled all the product from their shelves so that they wouldn't have to deal with customers who bought the stoves but then couldn't find fuel. And then came the last nail in Gaz' coffin: Coleman, who to this day hold a large stock of Gaz fuel in their Wichita, KS, warehouses, added a "hazard shipping charge" to the canisters that pushed the wholesale price of a single canister up over the retail price. In a matter of weeks, Gaz effectively disappeared from the American market.
There is nothing wrong with my stove. It works perfectly. I've taken it with me on trips in a dozen countries or more, on three continents. I've made meals on this stove that were better and more memorable than ones made in the comfort and amenity of my own home. There are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of these stoves out there in the world, no doubt in similarly perfect operating condition. The free market killed this stove. The needless buying and selling of companies, the mergers, the acquisitions, the money-can-correct-competition attitudes of folks in suits who never go camping killed this stove. This perfect stove. My very first camp stove.
(None of the "facts" above have been verified. I assembled the [ahem] history from a variety of accounts told to me as I looked for canisters on the web, in (what turned into several hours of) phone conversations, and at local and distant retailers. But it's a good story, I hope well-told, and it gives me a reason to be bitter about a wrong inflicted upon me (the loss of my favorite stove), so it's what I'm sticking with, truth be damned.)
