SSCY Tack Totebag/Backpack
Simple tote bag with enormous capacity
I’ve always had a penchant for bags, of any kind. I adore them. I tend to like them stripped to their absolute essentials, and made well enough that I’d trust my life to them in any sort of unreasonable (and unlikely) dangling-by-my-backpack-from-a-skilift scenario. About eleven weeks ago my wife and I adopted a beautiful baby girl at birth, and so it was about thirteen weeks ago that I purchased the SSCY Tack in preparation for parenthood. I bought it as my ‘diaper bag’.
The nifty trick it pulls off is that it converts gracefully from a one-shoulder tote, to a dual strapped backpack. I’ve seen other bags attempt this, but it usually comes at a cost of complexity and overall weakened build quality. The Tack remains drop-dead simple and bulletproof. The target market is presumably hipster bicycle beer runs and farmer’s market trips. I don’t doubt it’s great for that. The bag is _enormous_. We refer to it as my ‘bag of holding’ because there’s always room for whatever else we want to put in it, and it’s a hilarious magic trick to lay out it’s contents on the floor when it’s been used for a day’s outing. Without a doubt you could put a 24 pack in here and still have room for a large sweater and your lunch.
As a diaper bag it’s great. The outside pockets are ideal size to securely hold bottles-in-waiting, pacifiers, or snacks. In it’s tote configuration the straps are plenty long to hand off of the back of a stroller.
In backpack mode folks used to plus ergonomic padded straps will be dissapointed. This is literally a heavy canvas tub with seatbelts stitched to it. I don’t mind that much, it serves as a reminder not to haul so much weight that it’ll be bad for my back with or without shoulder-chaffing. The other limitation I find is wanting to hang things from it like keys water bottles, kids toys, etc. I’ll probably be stitching some accessory loops to the outside and inside for this purpose.
All in all, I don’t know what I’d do without it. Easily the best money I’ve spent on a bag, and that’s saying something.
07/19/13
