Ski jacket maker Obermeyer is recalling four models of cute kids’ jackets (Posey, Lily, Rose, and Daisy) because a drawstring that wraps around the neck can strangle them. When you’re a kid, you always feel like outdoor jackets are suffocating you, so your parents probably wouldn’t notice if they actually were. No injuries have been reported. If you have kids or a really small wife who wears child-sized clothing, take the drawstring out before you child gets hurt and we have to feel bad making fun of clothing designers who accidently build strangulation measures into the coats.

via Out There

Mountain Hardwear announced recalls of the Refugium and Radiance heated jackets [pdf]. The heated elements were made for Mountain Hardwear by Ardica, and they’ve found that some of the jackets suffered from overheating problems that could cause burns.

I suppose that’s better than the heated Columbia boots, which the Gear Junkie said worked so poorly you could hardly tell if they were on or off.

It has not been a good year for heated outerwear, but as long as consumers continue wearing cotton waffle long underwear, there will continue to be a market for it.

via GetOutdoors

Merrell’s new line of NADA jackets takes their name from an acronym of the phrase “Not Any Dye Applied.” As you would guess, the garments are Storm Trooper white, which is going to look great when I sit on a bus seat or some grease drips off the chairlift tower onto me. Merrill’s claim is that leaving the jackets plain white instead of giving them a dye job drastically decreases the pollutants that need to be poured into the garment. They could put some kind of heavy duty chemical on the shell so that you could wipe off grease and coffee stains, but that would defeat the purpose of skipping the dye. These jackets will be out in Fall 09.

via Gear Junkie

You’ll have to balance your chess set, binoculars, and bird-identification guide on your head if you get cold and need to transform your backpack into a jacket. The RuckJack snaps together with a couple clips and a zipper to convert from a rain jacket to a backpack. You know what someone should do? Put some “mini backpacks” on the sides of a jacket. They could zip shut so you wouldn’t lose your keys or wallet, and then you could even keep your hands in them if it was cold out.

via Boing Boing

I guarantee a marketing person opposed the name of this jacket on the grounds that some snarky blogger would refer to it as ‘craptastic.’ You’ll get no such satisfaction here. The North Face Crimptastic Hybrid Jacket is an 800-fill down jacket that will retail for a mere $230 this fall. I’d pay at least twice that to dress up in a shiny outfit with those crazy joints—this thing looks like it came straight from the pages of some 1990s Japanese comic.

via Popular Mechanics