The Crumpler Light Delight Messenger!

In late 2018, while wandering around Prague I came across a Crumpler store. Crumpler is a brand born in Melbourne, and one that I’ve carried for years. At the time I was somewhat regreting leaving my Messenger bag behind.

It’s all fine to fit everything into one bag as a digital nomad, but after arriving you still need something carry things around in day to day. Hanging on the edge of one of the racks was a foldable crumpler bag that I’d never seen before.

There were a collection of different colours. It didn’t take long to find the colour I liked and I walked out of the store happy. For the next two and a half years it served as my primary day bag. Eventually it started to get a bit tatty, washing it didn’t help, so I decided it was time to replace it.

Having been extremely happy with it, I went searching to see if I could replace it like-for-like. Only to discover that it barely existed in the first place.

Crumpler, in their early rush to get out into the world market had signed some international deals that meant that it wasn’t the same business at all, but rather one with the same name and a right to use the designs. As it turned out they’d added the design I loved. If I went to any of the stores in Australia I wouldn’t be able to find it.

It’s an absolutely superb messenger bag. It’s smaller and lighter than anything else I could find on the market. Without anything in it, it weighs in at 440g.

Bags with comparitive dimensions like the Zero Border Messenger Bag and Barney Rustle Blanket Laptop Messenger weigh in at 1kg and 1.3kg respectively. If you’re trying to stay under 10kg for some carry-on only flights, that’s a huge difference.

The weight difference is probably mostly down to the lack of padding in Light Delight Messenger. While at first it might feel a bit uncomfortable to not be padding the laptop very much, it hasn’t been a problem for me over the two and half years. I’ve been carrying it.

The story has a happy ending though. While it’s almost impossible to search online for this bag, with searches that end in Amazon (out of stock) or back on a crumpler site that never stocked it. I found it in stock on the Crumpler Prague. After I purchased it was out of stock. Did I buy the last one?

In the interest in helping people who might want to Google in future. Crumpler now sells Light Delight 4000 and 6000 camera bags. These are not the same, and aimed at cameras.

The LDM-012 was silver and brown (the one I bought in 2018).

The LDM-011 was black .

The LDM-013 was bright orange “Carrot”.

The LDM-006 was blue/brown(orange?).

The LDM-007 was “Deep Brown”

The LDM-010 was Steel Grey and Orange.