I have a bunch of the older ones with the more rubbery coating, which is unsurprisingly better than the newer, stiffer, more planet friendly coating (which is still decent but doesn't like getting smashed between a hard surface like a steel tank neck and another hard surface like a tarmac), and they work well for hauling all your worldly possessions around the globe.
I've got to agree with this - the quality/ruggedness of newer generation bags does seem to have declined. I used a TNF duffle for many years (hence my earlier post in the thread), and it was literally dragged around the globe, strapped to the side of a Land Rover for weeks on the Belize/Guatamalan border, piled on a Land Cruiser roof in the Rub' al Khali, kicked unceremoniously from the tail ramps of countless C-130s, humped and dumped around rat infested pits across Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam..
It remains, to this day, intact and proud.
Shortly after my initial post here (2010), I tried my luck with a different bag.. a Mountain Hardware duffle/expedition bag. I thought it'd be the same, but it wasn't. Like the newer TNF bag, it was a thinner, stiffer material. Needless to say, I was disappointed in the performance - especially the durability. After a year in the Philippines, it was a wreck. Not the most expeditionary demands, but it was humped and dumped on jeepneys, moto-tricyles and buses on a regular basis. It suffered pin-hole punctures, then splits and then the base material just crumbled away in places.
I've noticed a similar trend; from ruggedness to light-weight/portability across the market with climbing/expeditionary kit. I've been looking around for a serious backpack for the last 6 months, but found nothing that'd cope with the necessary abuses. Even the military surplus stuff seems flimsy compared to what I used in the 80/90/00's.
