GSI Outdoors Telescoping Foon

When used as the manufacturer intended this utensil works well. Sadly the manufacturer's intended use is extremely limited.

I got a two of these utensils (I refuse to call it a foon) in a GSI Pinnacle Dualist set. I only used them twice, maybe three times, because one of them broke. My review will be limited since I used them so little but as they lacked even a basic review and I recently saw them mocked as totally useless in a review for another product I figured a basic review would be satisfactory.

The Good

These things are very light and they do pack up very small, small enough to fit inside the afore mentioned cook set. They open and close easy and the simple rail plus friction lock mechanism cleans out easy so you won't have a build up of food gunk. The tines are smallish but works well on noodles and soft meat.

The Bad

Sadly the con seriously outweighs the pros. These are just too fragile. The tines do not work so well on anything that is even slightly hard. Most meats and thick al dente pasta will make you work and if you push to hard, like I did, you will pop the spade out of the handle's rail and not be able to get it back in with out damaging it.

in Theory but not in Practice

As far as I can tell GSI's theory on how to use these utensils is this:

• The utensil should only ever be in the bowl for storage or in your hand for use. It should not be set down or put anywhere it could be exposed to any type of force.
• The utensil should only be used to eat things from the bowl that can be cooked in the pot that came with the set. Anything that won't fit in the pot and bowl is to big for this spoon.

If you follow these rules you will probably have a very pleasant experience with this utensil. Otherwise this utensil is just to specialized and fragile when compared to a titanium spork, or even GSI's slightly larger and heavier stacking utensils, for backcountry use.