Changing Bag Review - PacaPod Picos Shell

You will soon discover that I am a great fan of the PacaPod range of changing bags.  This is because it calls to my love of a bag within a bag system which drives himself mad as he refuses to listen when I tell him which bag has what in it.... Anyway, the PacaPod range was designed by a mum from Devon and it's main feature is the three in one system it has which is an outer bag parent bag (1), an insulated feeder pod (2) and a changer pod (3) which keeps your changing stuff away from your feeding stuff and therefore more hygenic.  I just love that it's a bag within a bag system.

I already have the Samui which is from their Lite bag range and absolutely love it!! I will be doing a full review of it shortly.  I wanted to try a different a style of bag from them and because I already had the feeder and changer pods from my Samui I ordered a Picos shell which is their 'dad type' backpack bag without the pods.

The bag arrived in rather nice biodegradable wrapping from PacaPod with a local courier this morning.  It was roughly 2 days that it took to get to me which given the rather hefty £14.95 postage charge to the Highlands, I was expecting!

As you can see from the picture it's a very nice black backpack style bag with brown zips, padded shoulder straps, chest buckle and a water bottle pocket on each side.

The front of the backpack has a large pocket with a zip opening up the front for all the parent bits and inside this pocket is an elasticated key fob attachement (so you don't have to root around for your keys all the time) and three slip pockets for the likes of sunglasses, mobile phone etc.  It is also a deep pocket so you would be able to slip items in the bottom of it.

 However, I really didn't like this pocket.  I found it too difficult to reach the pockets to the sides of the zip and once they had items in them, it would have been really difficult to retrieve anything that was in the bottom of the pocket.

Going into the main compartment of the bag, this opens with a double zip which is handy and has two loops on the inside to attach your pods to using the little attachment loops that you get at the top of each pod.  For demonstration purposes in this picture, I've used the more solid type pods you get (as opposed to the lite versions I have with my Samui) to show how the bag is filled. 

In the front part (that folds down) you can see there is a slip pocket which is where the changing mat is designed to go.  I put in the changing mat from the Samui plus an Aden & Anais Muslin Swaddle (more to come on those in a later post) and they fitted lovely.  Then I had the PacaPod Changer Toy pod in the bottom and the Feeder pod in the top with Son 3's medicine bag and some toys.  You can see from the picture that it all fitted quite nicely.

However, I felt it would have been a pain getting the pods in and out as everything would sort of fall around the space plus this all made the bag rather heavy as it is already a very sturdy bag made from good well structured fabric.  And I also felt that this style didn't really suit me and could have been achieved with a cheaper rucksack from Mountain Warehouse.

Sadly, this with the inaccessability of the front 'parent' pocket made me come to the conclusion that this bag would have to go back.  Bit of a bummer given the hefty delivery charge.  However, it did convince me that I wanted the hands-free element of a backpack style bag so I have ordered the PacaPod Hastings from Natural Baby Shower to give it a whirl :)  Keep an eye out for that review coming in the future!!

Kelly x