By:  Pam Melton
 
My team is having a rough patch, Peyton Manning and the Colts are in town and the game-time temp is 33 degrees for Thursday Night Football on the NFL® Network. Going into this game I’m pretty sure of two things, it’s not gonna get any warmer as the night goes on and the Titans are probably going to make me wonder why I’m sitting out there freezing my butt off on a Thursday night. Enter Milwaukee Tool’s® 12 Volt Cordless Heated Jacket. Frankly, if I hadn’t known I was going to be checking this jacket out, I probably would have watched the game on the tube, drinking beer that doesn’t cost 7 bucks a pop. Anywho, this is a good looking jacket and an absolutely fabulous idea.
 
The jacket was sent for Creative Genius Brad to review for ToolSkool. When I saw it, the first thing that rushed to mind was cold-game-gear Baby! Since they sent it for Brad, it’s like a double X or something. Which is fine, ‘cause the skeptic in me was layering anyway. If I have to watch my team stinkin’ up the field, I’m not taking any chances on being any colder than necessary. That being said, I dressed exactly the same as the Redskins game the previous week, which wasn’t as cold as this one and I froze my patukus off.
 
Part of my layering included a turtle neck. One of the first things that I liked about the jacket itself is the way the top tabs over and encloses the zipper, which really snugs up around the neck and helps hold in the heat generated by the jacket (as I discovered as the night went on). The battery is about the size of the core of a toilet paper roll, just a bit smaller in diameter and length, and weighs a little less than a pound (think-a box of butter). It fits into a little pocket that’s just slightly behind the left hip, so you don’t really feel the added bulk when seated. Speaking of pockets, there are two at the waist and one on the chest, which was surprisingly deep enough to hold my ticket, phone and smokes (the ability to avoid a purse is critical in gameday outerwear).
 
Now, let’s get down to the business end – it works! Man, I was very toasty. As a matter of fact, I kept it on the low and medium settings most of the night, only putting it on high to see how warm it actually got. On high, it actually made me sweat a little (or I was havin’ a flash – hard to tell). Now, my only question is that if I were wearing thinner clothing, would the heat panels have been uncomfortable? I’m guessing not, simply because of the quality of the jacket lining. Anytime I opened the jacket, I could definitely feel the heat escaping, hence the discovery of how well the collar held the heat in. The one criticism I have is that the claim is that it works for up to 6 hours. The battery tanked on me before the game was over, so I got about 3 hours out of it. Maybe periodically changing the setting affected the cycle time of the battery, I dunno. It was long enough for my purposes, so I wasn’t too upset about it.
 
As I said earlier, Brad is going to be doing a review on this jacket from a construction guy’s point of view, it’ll be interested to see what he thinks. All’s I know is that from a tailgating point of view, this thing rocks. The only thing that would make it better is if I could get it with a Titans logo on it. I’ve found retails from $229 to $169 for the kit, which includes the jacket, battery and charger. Since the battery is the same one used on their 12 volt, M12® line of tools, if you already have one of the tools, you don’t need the kit, just the jacket. Given what hubby paid for my leather Titans jacket a few Christmases ago, this price point doesn’t seem outlandish to me, especially if you or your target wearer does a lot of other stuff outside when it’s cold. Since we didn’t have any video shoots scheduled where we could slide this in, I found a review video done from a woman’s point of view, provided by a company which also sports the lowest price found of $169 for the jacket kit.
 
I’m givin’ this baby 5 fingernails. I hope hubby gets the hint and I find my very own under the tree this year.

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