I decided to conduct a test under 'laboratory' conditions  of all my stoves in order to determine speed of heating.  Candidiates were

SVEA 123 - my original petrol stove before gaz was the in thing .

Epigas stove - one which connects by tube to cannister - my first gaz stove

Pocket Rocket - purchased for its lightness

Coleman F1 - purchsed because I had   read that  Pocket Rockets did not work with all Coleman cannisters

Primus Multifuel - purchased when I required multi fuels

MSR Superfly - purchased for compatibility with both coleman and camping gaz cylinders.

Pepsi Stove - made for the  fun of it.

Results of 1st run to boil half a pint of water. Coleman 250 butane/propane.

SVE123 - did not start - don't have any petrol in house

EPIGAS -  fell at first fence - would not work

Pocket Rocket - fell at first fence - would not work

Coleman F1 - just under 2 minutes

Primus - fell at first fence - would not work 

MSR Superfly - 2.5 minutes 

Pepsi Stove - 4 minutes 

I could not work out why there were so many  fallers - eventually tried the fallers again using a similar cannister.

Results of 2nd run

Pocket Rocket - 2 minutes

Epigas - 2.25 minutes

Primus - 5 minutes

I compared the  two cannisters and noticed that the central screw on the dubious one protruded slightly further and I hence assume that the probe on the  fallers  was not reaching the valve  or whatever.  Three conclusions from  this:-

My decision to buy the F1 was vindicated

So much for Coleman quality control

When I purchase cannisters in future I will take my pocket rocket  with me to test them out  in the shop ?

 Thanks Trevor. The relevent  section in your link is:-

"Another problem is that although all cartridges should conform to a CE norm, there can be minor differences even from the same brand (due to the fact they are made in hundreds of thousands and in several factories), sometimes resulting in one cartridge that'll work and another that won't.

Both of these problems can affect the high tech stoves more than their more basic cousins, as the better stoves are made to much finer tolerances, even though this isn't sometimes matched by their fuel source. This has been a common problem with the MSR Pocket Rocket on 120g cartridges and the Snow Peak GigaPower on some non Snow Peak cartridges. My advice is that you should screw on and test all your cartridges before a big route and if in doubt always take a spare. It is also a good idea to carry several smaller cartridges rather than one big huge one (2 x 250g cartridges instead of a single 450g for example), so if you do get a dud you have another option."

The  minor difference on my faulty cannister was detectable by the human eye.  The fact that they are made in 100 and 1000s and in several factories is irrelevent.  Where is quality control. Bring on cannisters made by Toyoto.

Quality control is not free: there would be a choice: try out the cannisters between buying htem and leaving on your trip, and returning the very occasional dud for a change, or paying more for your all of your gas cannisters.  if you had a shop where you had a choice of the two, which do you think would sell better?  And the answer will ultimately be reflected in the stock provided.  Where QA is easy enough to do yourself and gives you a cheaper product, my guess is people will do the QA themselves.

Pete. 

Working in a certain outdoor store, myself and my colleague stumbled across a similar problem. Inside the store, we tried every gas stove we had upon the coleman 250 cartridge, and the go gas version. We found the coleman canister only worked with coleman stoves. If you look at the fitting, the pin is set lower in the 250 cartridge than in any other. This was on every cartridge.

Half_Viking 

Trangia gas converter and OD Titan micro-stove seen to work okay on the Coleman cans we've used, for data points.

Pete.