Maybe it's just me but wouldn't it be better to just buy the physical bitcoins and stash those?
It's the same thing as hiding a slip of paper. The Casascius Bitcoin just contains the Private Key to the wallet. It's the same thing as a paper wallet.
Not quite. It's the same thing as a paper wallet which someone potentially on the other side of the globe created for you, when you can create one yourself with an offline computer.