12 Pack Original Nylon Soft Cooler

This cooler is by far the best soft-sided cooler you can buy! Worth every penny. We bought it to take in the boat with us on trips to the river. In South Georgia July heat (100+ degrees) sitting in the sunshine for most of the day, this cooler performed like a champ. After an hour ride to the river, nine hours in the sunshine, and an hour ride back home, there was still some ice (partially melted, yes, but still frozen) in this cooler. For best results you have to fold the ends over and snap them down in place, which reduces your overall capacity a little, but is well worth it in performance.In the 12-pack version, we were able to pack 4 cans of soda, 4 - 8 oz. bottles of water, 2 - 8 oz. Gatorade, a picnic bottle of mayonaise, a pack of ham and sliced cheese in a zipper bag, and a tomato for slicing along with two small single-serving snack bags of cookies. We filled the remaining space with ice. To our amazement, this cooler was less than half the weight (filled) than the picnic cooler we had been taking along. It took up less room in the boat and performed comparably to our Coleman 5-day cooler.We experience no leaking of the melting ice from inside the cooler out and even though we got some water in the boat and on the cooler, the exterior remained virtually water-proof!This cooler's insulation is at least five to ten times that of the soft-sided lunch coolers you will find in most stores. Zippers, snaps, handles, and straps all seem well made and durable.One reviewer said the strap was not long enough. However, I am 5' 8" and when I adjusted the strap to its full length (it has a slide so you can adjust the length), it hung from my shoulder to just past my waist. The shell material is thick and durable, comparable to the material you would find in an expensive piece of luggage.The only downside with this cooler is that once you pack enough cold supplies for a day, you have no room left for bread. (We carried ours along in a separate bag.) However, it is worth the weight savings and space savings for that little inconvenience. I am impressed with this cooler and feel I made a good investment in a product that performs as described and will last us for years. We've taken it to the river three times, now, and on a five-hour car trip to the mountains and so far cold food has stayed cold for over a day without adding more ice, we've had no leaks except for the one time I didn't strap the sides back down after zipping it up (my fault), and the carry strap has made transport a snap! I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a reliable, durable picnic cooler!

9-11-12. This Polar Bear Coolers 12 Pack Soft Cooler in Red arrived directly from the manufacturer although vended by eBags.com. The price on Amazon.com was the best I could find anywhere, including at eBags Website. The cooler bag, while a "soft-sided" bag, is a very stiff bag made of heavy-duty canvas exterior and very heavy-grade vinyl liner that is water-proof. To expand the bag and form the stiff liner, on initial receipt from vendor, you fill it with hot water (approximately 115 degrees F.) for five minutes. This bag will hold about four US gallons of water, so do it in a sink, if possible. When the vinyl is heated and flexible, pour out the water and dry it with a cloth/paper towel, then form the liner to fit the full extent of the canvas outer shell. The liner is too large for the shell, when new, but this will probably shrink over time as the vinyl chemicals evaporate (they always do). Shape the canvas bag into a rectangle, using the side retainer straps to keep it in that basic shape (thats the purpose of the straps). The wide sturdy carry strap is detachable and has an anti-slip shoulder pad installed. The strap is adjustable and sufficiently long that a tall person will have no difficulty with the length and it can be shortened also. The attached dual handles have a velcro wrap to hold them together. The side pocket is quite small and will hold a small amount of napkins, plastic utensils, or whatever you can insert into it. You have to push the stiff vinyl liner away as the side pocket is between the canvas shell and the vinyl liner.As I will use it mostly for daily lunch carry, the first day it did not slip off my shoulder even once; a remarkable accomplishment, as all other lunch bags I have used (the kind you get at Walmart or the $15 ones on amazon.com) seem to fall off continually. That is one of the reasons I bought this product. Overall, this is an outstandingly well constructed product made with high quality control. I'm impressed and pleased with it.2-21-13.Update. The bag I received developed cracks in the vinyl liner from daily opening and closing. I contacted the manufacturer, Polar Bear Coolers, in Cumming, Georgia, USA and the Customer Service representative, Leslie, promptly apologized and replaced the bag, advising that they had a bad batch of bags where the vinyl had the wrong mix of chemicals during manufacture. The Customer service is among the very best I have ever had from any company. They even sent a UPS pre-paid label for me to return the defective bag so they could further investigate the quality control issue to assure their products consistently meet their high manufacturing standards. The product is definitely a great product and I can highly recommend it. I use it daily to carry my lunch to work with ice-cold bottles of beverage. The icepacks I use stay frozen all day and the beverages are the same temperature that they were in my refrigerator. Very refreshing. These will make great gifts for friends.