#16 - 2010 295A - Birthday series, part 2

Vital Stats
Model: 295A
Date: July 2010
Technology: Adjustable (Schrader valve)
Mantles: 2
Fuel: Gasoline/ Dual Fuel
Date Acquired: August 25, 2017


Any parent who has more than one child, and especially two that are close in age, knows you can't do something special for one without making the same effort for the other. So once my son had a lantern, my daughter had to have one too.  Her's didn't fall into my lap like my sons so I had to go searching, but I was very fortunate to quickly find one on eBay that fit the bill.  Her's was also unused but did not come in a box.

The 295A is effectively the "big sibling" of the 285A; same lantern, but bigger.  Both the 285A and 295A are still made today and are a minor tweak of the 288A and 290A of the 1980's, respectively.  The main difference being that the models are marketed and branded as being "dual fuel", meaning it burns both camp fuel and unleaded gasoline, but most savvy collectors understand that this was just a marketing ploy.  Since the very first Coleman lantern was made available to the public in 1914 they were engineered to be "gasoline lanterns", and all through the Coleman product line in the following decades you will see almost all model's instructions will tell you to "fill with clean, fresh gasoline".  

It was always widely known that gasoline deposits are very hard on a lantern over the years.  Varnish can settle in the tank and its components, and burned fuel can gum up a generator with carbon deposits.  Thus, Coleman saw an opportunity to create a more cleanly burning fuel that would extend the life of lantern and its parts, and increase its product line, in the form of Coleman Fuel. In the literature of an appliance following that time it will recommend that you purchase Coleman Fuel as your fuel of choice, but they are still gasoline burning models.  By the 1990's there was a growing assumption in the public that a Coleman lantern was intended to burn Coleman Fuel, not gasoline. Coleman leveraged this opportunity to relaunch the 286/288/290 line as their Unleaded/Dual-Fuel models 282/285/295. The only real difference, apart from a few cosmetic changes that included a starkly different silver-gray fount, is a larger generator that takes longer to gum up than the skinny generators of their predecessors.  Interestingly, Coleman also took this opportunity to modify the generator so that it is nearly impossible to disassemble and service and the owner must buy a replacement. 

Regardless, these are good running lanterns and have become almost as iconic as their ancestors to their contemporary users.  In fact, the 285(A)/295(A)* line are now one of the longest running lantern models in Coleman lantern history!  

*the main different between the 285 and 285A (same with 295, 288, 290, 286 and 282) is the absence of a globe "cage" in the A variant.  

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