Back in January, The Watercraft Journal first wrote about the Bopenski KickBack PWC folding chair. Sure, it was a pretty cool concept – a collapsible folding chair that latches to your runabout’s tow eye, letting you leisure with your feet up while the kids go for a swim or you just want to listen to the stillness of an isolated shady cove. Whether equipped with a cold drink in our hand or a fishing rod, the promised experience painted a tempting picture. Yet, the asking price of $299.99 for a product that hadn’t even come out yet seemed, well…
Proving that what we say here has some serious sway, Bopenski’s owner Joe Borden gave us a call. “I want to fly up and have you try it,” he invited. We agreed, and sure to his word, Joe was at the airport holding a bright red canvas bag with the KickBack chair in it less than two weeks later. With our 2018 Yamaha GP1800 in tow, we sped off straight to the lake. At the launch, Joe took little time to unzip the bag and hand the chair over.
Each length of tube is made from anodized 7075-T6 aluminum attached to solid, durable indexing joints; all stainless steel mounting hardware; breathable, X-patterned nylon mesh seat and back that is easily-removed for washing; and two huge, rubberized no-slip feet. All of the contact points are specialty-molded plastic with Bopenski’s logo molded in. A stainless self-locking hook tethers the chair to the tow eye, and a single, coated J-hook loops around the transom’s bondline. The seatback is embroidered with the company logo. Even the cup holder is insulated and split to hold a drink and a snack (or cell phone).
The hardware alone equates for more than half of the asking price.
“Well, this isn’t some cheapo Wal-Mart umbrella chair,” we joked, giving out a low whistle. “No, it’s not!” Joe agreed. “And everything is repairable – we’ll sell you all the replacement parts and hardware to repair it if something were to happen. I personally hate ‘disposable’ products. We built this to last. Heck, it’ll last longer than the customer has the ski.”
While this article is not our full length “Real Review” of Bopenski’s KickBack chair, and there’s a lot to this item we haven’t shared, we did get a taste of how to attach it to our rear hand grips for travel, unpack it and set it up (it takes less than a minute); and put our feet up and soak in the springtime sunshine. Once the Bopenski receives its first production run of chairs in early May, we’ll have a feature-length review of the KickBack here on The Watercraft Journal. Until that time, Bopenski has cut one third of the price off from the original $299.99. Anyone who places a pre-order will be charged $199.99 and get their KickBack chair with zero shipping (to the lower 48 states).
