Reviews > Cook Gear > Cooking Accessories > Flatworld Orikaso Picnic Set > Roger Caffin > Field Report

Field Report - Orikaso Fold Flat Picnic Set
Roger Caffin
23-June-2005

Product Information

Product Description

While the Flatworld web site enthused greatly about the Orikaso products, it was surprisingly short on actual product details. Far more product information was available on the web site for Marvelox, a Flatworld distributor in New Zealand. Their specifications are given above, and their Product information is quoted below. In brief, these are flat sheets of plastic which can be folded up into a cup, a bowl and a dish.

"Orikaso Flatworld - non breakable backpackers flexible flat cups, bowls, and dishes - all available in red or blue. This range is compact, easy to clean, multifunctional, simple to fold, incredibly durable, lighter than titanium, unfolds completely flat, takes up hardly any space, and is very versatile. It is ideal for Camping, Backpacking, Picnics, Barbeques, or Caravanning. Dishwasher safe, not for microwave, max temperature 120°C (boiling water ok, not for hot oil), made of food grade polycarbonate [sic, but it is actually polypropylene] and food grade colouring.
Bowl - besides it obvious uses, can also be used serving water to your Dog
Cup - features insulated handle (well suited for hot drinks)
Dish - 1) deep dish, 2) shallow dish, 3) food strainer, 4) spout, 5) funnel, 6) plate, 7) chopping board, 8) coffee strainer (with filter paper), and more.
Picnic set - convenience of buying a complete set" (The Picnic set includes two of everything.)

Preamble and Summary

I mentioned in my Initial Report that I was in the market for replacements for my current 'tableware': a cheap rigid plastic Decor bowl, a cheap rigid plastic Decor mug, a small rigid Tupperware-style plastic bowl for soup and a flat bit of polyethylene sheet for cutting and so on. I have tested these Orikaso items on a number of walking trips, sometimes taking the full Picnic set with me and using my wife as a guinea pig for some of the testing. The bottom line for me is "Well, yes, but ...". They do have some very good uses, but they are not quite what I was looking for. I will go through my experiences and explain what this means. I will also make some references to my old Decor cup and bowl, but mainly to highlight particular issues rather than to do a shootout comparison.

Durability

It would be entirely reasonable to suggest that anyone looking at these 'Origami' plates would wonder whether the plastic will last. Will it start to tear at the high-stress corners, or start to leak at some of the complex folds? I decided to do some serious testing. I separated the full picnic set into two halves. Both halves were taken on walking trips, but one half was also subjected to 'accelerated testing'. Every morning for the two months of the Field Test period I disassembled the three items (cup, bowl and dish) and flattened them out, as though they were to be put in my pack. Every evening I reassembled the three items into their folded shapes. I deliberately did this in a fairly casual manner - I was neither rough nor particularly gentle with the process.

It quickly became apparent that there are some key stress areas. The bottom corners of the folds in the bowl and dish get a lot of folding stress, and the corners inside the tabs on the edge of the bowls get a lot of tension when the bowl is folded up. The same applies to various places on the cup. On the other hand, it did not seem that the studs were being really stressed.

Well, after all this testing, I have to report that the plastic survived very well. There were no signs of leaks at the corners, nor was there any suggestion of tearing at the tabs. In fact, at one stage during the two months Field Test period I managed to mix up the two half sets, and I had considerable difficulty deciding which half was the accelerated testing half! I have to conclude that the material is rugged.

One thing which did come out of this test was the realisation that packing the items away was not quite as simple as it sounds. The whole point of the design is to allow the items to be packed flat, which can be done, but they do try to fight against this a bit. The cup is especially prone to retaining its shape, as shown here. I had to fold the cup handle under the body and then sandwich it between the dish and the bowl with some amount of pressure to get it flat enough to go into my pack. This does not really matter much of course, and is a natural consequence of the plastic used: it retains some degree of 'set'. In the accelerated testing I took to keeping the three items being tested flat under a heavy book during the day. This simulated the flat state they would be in when stuffed in my pack.

Stability

The next thing one wants in a cup and a bowl is reasonable stability. Here I found some problems. A rigid bowl usually has at least a flat base, if not a slightly indented one, while a rigid cup often almost always some sort of recess in the base. It might be more appropriate to say that these items normally have a small rim around the base. Certainly all our china and plastic cups and bowls do. But these Orikaso items are folded, not moulded, and the bases usually show some small amount of outwards curvature. This can be seen from the way the light reflects off the base of the cup in the picture here. This slight bulge means that the items, especially the cup and the bowl, could rock a little. The dish was not so bad as its base is quite large in comparison, and the straight folds also seemed to help keep the bottom flat. Testing at home showed that the amount of rocking was small, possibly tolerable. However, out in the field I found that the situation was not so good, and there seemed to be several reasons for this.

• The difference in the design of the base was more significant than I had expected. The rim around the edge of the base of a moulded cup or bowl means that the recessed centre can span across small irregularities (sticks, pebbles etc) without much of a problem, but the slightly bulging base on the Orikaso cup made it very susceptible to small sticks and pebbles. The same applied to the base of the folded bowl.
• The second problem was simply one of size, as illustrated to the right. The base of the bowl is at the most 70 mm across, while the base of my cheap Decor bowl is 110 mm across. The greater diameter of the Decor bowl does give greater stability. The cup is only 55 mm across the almost square base, while my Decor cup is about 70 mm across. The Orikaso dish is not as bad as its base is 100 mm square. This means the bowl and the cup have relatively small bases, and this enhances the reduced stability from the bulges.
• The third problem follows on from the second one to some degree. The smaller base of the bowl means the sides have to be much higher to hold the same amount of food: just over 70 mm compared with about 40 mm for my Decor bowl. This translates into a higher centre of gravity when I put my dinner into the bowl. The cup height is about the same, while the dish is also high. A higher centre of gravity means the bowl will tip over more easily once it starts to lean.

The result is that the cup and the bowl are noticeably less stable in the field on a rough surface. I found I had to scrape two depressions in the ground for the bowls at dinner time when I wanted to fill them with nice hot stew. Unfortunately, the next topic added to the problems.

Flexibility

These Orikaso items are flexible. To be sure, the folding adds some rigidity, but not that much. Putting a hot liquid or food into one of them makes the plastic even more flexible. This is quite normal for any plastic. It did mean that I had to be very careful in handling the items when they had food in them. In more detail, what i found was as follows.

• The cup has a natural tendency to flatten because the 'sides' are only a single layer, while the 'front' and 'back' are multiple layers. However, it kept this shape reasonably well, even when full of hot coffee, as shown to the right. On the other hand, in practice it seemed a little small for my liking, partly for reasons given below.
• The bowl was tricky when filled with hot food: it could distort quite badly if not supported right around. This was especially dangerous if the bowl was fairly full of sloppy stew. Where this was really noticeable was those occasions in the evening when I would pick up a full bowl of stew and pass it to my wife who was normally sitting further back in our tent in her sleeping bag. The risk of getting stew spilt on her bag seemed to be quite high, and we used a cover over her bag to limit any mess. Fortunately the hazard was obvious, and we could watch what we were doing very carefully.
• The dish did not seem to have as many problems here. Perhaps the steeper sides, wider base and straight-line folds limited the amount of flex. On the other hand, the corner creases made life difficult, as explained below.
• I had hoped to use the dish as a plate for lunch, which usually includes wholemeal buns or a lot of biscuits with butter, jam, honey and cheese. I thought the dish might be best for this. However, I encountered several problems. The first was that the dish is very deep, and spreading stuff on biscuits at the bottom of a deep dish is not easy. (I have the same problem with the Decor bowl, so sometimes I tip it upside down and use the base.) So I opened the Orikaso dish out. However, the 'set' in the folds was significant, and the dish fought back. It wouldn't lie flat enough. I did get some success by doing up two (out of four) corners half way, as shown here. That seemed to stiffen the dish a bit while leaving access from the other side for my knife. Even so, the flexible plastic sheet was not really stiff enough to allow me to spread cold butter on biscuits in cold weather: the dish still tended to flex and my lunch could go everywhere.

Cup design problems

The cup is held together by a press stud on one side. I reported in my Initial Report that the inner part of this has a hole through it, and that hot coffee had leaked out. The web site warns about the need to observe the 'max' line. In practice, even with a lower level of liquid in the cup, I found that any slight sloshing around would cause coffee to hit the hole and leak out. I simply cannot afford to have this happen in our tent over my sleeping bag. It meant that I could only safely put about 200 mL into the cup - which is not enough coffee (or tea) for any walker!

After consulting the BackpackGearTest powers-that-be I put a small spot of silicone sealant in the hole, as indicated by the arrow in the picture to the right. This blocked the hole up and meant the cup could now hold up to about 300 mL. Unfortunately, this did not solve the entire problem, as I explain below. Anyhow, what's needed here is for Orikaso to change the design of the stud to one without the central hole, and I commend this idea to them.

Also noted was that the assembly of the coffee cup has not really got any easier over time. (But I have got a lot more practiced at doing it!) The 'front' with the metal press stud (shown on my knees in the picture above) is easy to do, and the folds at the back or handle area are also easy, but poking the end of the handle into the slot made by the folds remains tricky. The corners of the end of the handle just seem too big to go in easily at the arrow points shown to the left. I found the best way of getting the handle in was to buckle the end of it to match the curve of the cup wall: then it would slip in fairly easily. Otherwise the handle seemed to be a fraction large. In fact it is probably exactly the 'right' size once in place; getting it there is the problem. A better taper at the tip might solve this.

Creases

To get the 3-D shapes out of a 2-D bit of plastic, one has to have folds. They are, after all, central to the concept of Origami. But while folds are fine in plain paper, they turned out to be problematic in the field in sheet plastic.

• One consequence of these folds was however a bit unexpected: they turned out to be real hazards for spilling. I will explain. Table manners being slightly relaxed on a trip, I sometimes drink my soup out of my bowl rather than spoon it up. After all, one of the pictures on the web site shows the bowl with soup in it. But the first time I tried doing this with the bowl I nearly poured soup right down my front. What I had not anticipated was that one of the creases would act as a sneak path for the soup to leak out when I tilted the bowl. Look at the picture to the right. I was trying to drink from the lip in the middle, but the corner of the crease at the arrow turned out to be fractionally lower than the lip. I had to carefully flex the edge of the bowl and watch out for that crease to be able to drink my soup safely. This worked, but it was not a wonderful solution.
• The cup had leaked through the hole in the stud as mentioned above. Unfortunately, I continued to get small leaks or dribbles out of the cup after I had blocked the hole. This puzzled me for some time. I tracked these dribbles down to the creases around the press stud, or rather the folded layers of plastic. These may be seen in the picture above of the cup and dish on my legs. It seems that the thin gaps in the creases encourage hot coffee to wick up to the edge of the cup, and any small wobble would allow a little bit to trickle over the top edge. It was not much at any one time - half a dozen drops maybe, but more than I want on my sleeping bag when I am 'dining in'. The picture on the web site does show a quite low level of soup in the cup - only about 200 mL (6.7 fl oz) I estimate. I normally drink more like 350 mL (11.8 fl oz) with my dinner. I did not find a good solution to this.
• The most obvious problem with the creases in the bowl and dish was that liquid food could slip inside the folds and be hidden from my spoon. Especially with the bowl, some of the best bits of my dinner were being withheld from me! Not wishing to be thus deprived, I had to open up the bowl after spooning up most of my stew to get at all the hidden left-overs. (Of course, I had to do this anyhow for the subsequent washing up.) However, popping the tabs open meant the bowl went 'sprong', and bits of food could go flying around if I wasn't careful. The same problem applied to the dish of course, with the press studs at each corner.
• The dish has its corners cut off. This means that these corners are even more prone to leaking if the dish is used for any liquids. The web site does not show the dish with liquid foods in it. I haven't tried using it in the field for liquids as the hazard was obvious.
• The advertising mentions the use of the creases in the dish as a funnel and so on. I found the plastic a bit too flexible for this, and seldom have to do any funneling when walking anyhow. I did not test these extra 'uses'.

The Plastic Surface

I mentioned in the Initial Report that the sheet plastic used is embossed all over with a fine pattern. There is no apparent reason for this that I can see. Cleaning this did not seem to be a problem at home with lots of hot water and detergent, but I do have to record that the pattern, or maybe the surface itself, was much harder to wash clean of stew or muesli than the surface of my plastic Decor bowl when I was out walking. In particular, getting the last traces of stuff off the Orikaso set seemed much harder. I am not sure why. It could just possibly represent a health hazard on a very long walk, but that is pure conjecture at this stage. So I would suggest to Flatworld that they should seriously consider changing to a smooth surface.

Test Results so far

I can give answers to some of the questions I posed in my Initial Report:

• Will they stay folded up while in use?
  Certainly, with no problems.
• Will the fasteners last?
  Certainly, with no problems.
• How long will the 'hinges' last? Will they leak?
  So far I see little sign of any wear or damage to the folds, and no leaks from them.
• How flexible do they get when filled with hot food like stew or soup? How reliable are they when handled?
  Quite flexible: the bowl has to be handled with some care and the creases can leak.
• Can I cut on the dish when it is opened out flat?
  This was not really very successful as the folds persisted and the plastic flexed. The dish was 'sort-of' usable with two studs done up.
• Are the cups really going to handle many, many cups of near-boiling water? Will the handles collapse after a while?
  The handles are OK so far, but the size of the cup is a bit small in practical terms, the creases make for easy dribbles, and the metal stud has a hole (which can be fixed quite easily). I would have to say that the cup is not as successful as the bowl or the dish.
• How easy is it to clean the plastic?
  Not as easy as I would have liked. The pattern on the surface is a problem.
• Will the press studs accumulate food scraps?
  I have not seen any sign of this so far.

Assessment so far

Structurally, the Picnic set is surviving very well. There are some small design issues which could be improved, and I list them here:

• The press stud in the cup
• The height or volume of the cup
• The taper on the cup handle
• The pattern on the surface
• The small base of the bowl

I think most of the other problems I have outlined above have a common root. The Flatworld advertising shows the use of these items in what looks like a picnic or table environment (although it is hard to tell). They are all shown level. The pictures do not show them in a field environment where there are no flat rigid supporting surfaces.

In consequence, I think I have been pushing these items beyond their reasonable use. I do not think they are meant for serious bushwalking use. To be sure, we all do this sort of 'stretch' thing at times, but it would be a bit unfair to put all the blame for my problems on the Picnic set itself. Whenever I use the dish and the bowl as picnic containers on a table they perform well enough.

The pictures in the advertising do show the opened out items as being flat, and this was misleading for me. In practice, as noted above, the items are never flat once they have been folded a few times. This means their use as flat surfaces in the field is not really possible. They are not all that useful as a plate on which to butter biscuits unless well supported by a rigid surface such as a table. The web site does mention the use of the dish as a chopping board, but this too requires a table surface.

While the bowl and the dish work moderately well, especially on a table, I have to record that the cup does not seem to me as successful. It might work as part of a fold-flat Picnic set for people who want small drinks, but most walkers I know want bigger ones, without dribbles.

Long Term Assessment Targets

• I will continue the 'accelerated testing' to the end of the Long Term Test period to see how well the folds last - I have great hopes here.
• I will continue to use the bowl and the dish for appropriate container functions - situations where they will have a stable base.
• I will experiment with the use of the dish and possibly the bowl as cutting surfaces. The residual folding they now all carry does however make this difficult.
• The cup may get some limited use, but this is likely to be not as much.

Biographical Details

Reviewer:	Roger Caffin
Age:	59
Gender:	M
Weight:	61 kg (134 lb)
Height:	166 cm (65")
Email address:	r dot [surname] at acm dot org
Home:	Sydney, Australia

Backpacking Background

I started bushwalking (the Australian term) at 14, then took up rock climbing at University with the girl who became my wife and is my walking partner. Later on we took up ski touring and canyoning. Winter and summer, we prefer long hard trips by ourselves: about a week in Australia, up to two months in Europe/UK. We prefer fast and light in unfrequented trackless country. We would be out for at least three months a year. Over the last four years we have reduced our pack weights from 18 - 20 kg (40 - 45 lb) each to about 12 kg (26 lb), including food, for week-long trips. I designed and made much of our lightweight gear myself.

I am also the maintainer of the Australian aus.bushwalking FAQ web site www.bushwalking.org.au/FAQ/.

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