Packing along a few comforts, such as a travel pillow, when you are traveling is mandatory these days. But loading yourself down with a lot of weight or or bulk or taking an item you may only use once on a trip (an airline neck or back pillow as examples!) just won’t cut it. For an item to make it into HI Travel Tales luggage, it better do a few things to aid the traveler – and well.

Then I tested the Cocoon Lumbar Pillow. Forget the name, I just call this travel pillow my Comfort Binky for traveling.

Certainly, it works as a lumbar support when traveling by trains, planes and automobiles. But its shape (not too exaggerated of a dog-bone shape) allows it to work as a supportive neck roll stuffed into the bottom edge of global hotel pillows that can often be too flat for comfort.

Don’t blow it up quite as much and — voila! – you now have a neck pillow, albeit smaller, for propping yourself up in trains or planes.

It’s of course a given as a low-back support any place you need it.

What Cocoon calls its “Air Core” allows it to inflate inside a cushy fill so you get great comfort in a small packable size that weighs a mere 3 ounces. A twist valve keeps you from huffing your lungs out, lets you customize your fill, and allows easy deflation and stuffing into the bag it comes with.

One side of the approximately 16-inch x 4-inch x 8-inch inflated pillow ($30) has soft cozy fleece microfiber, while the other side is a soft, quiet nylon. Stowed for traveling, this package of utmost comfort is no larger than a softball at about 4 inches by 2 inches.

The Cocoon Lumbar Pillow  is now a permanent part of my travel repertoire and absolutely deserving of our coveted HITT Seal of Approval!