Editing The Pen Addict 111/transcript (section)

== Scribble Pen ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' I always thought it was Kahir.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it could be. Just like Moleskine, Moleskine. Yeah. So I like – but I thought the whole diehard Yippie-Ki-Yay part was pretty funny. So he sent us a link saying, hey, here's the photo we're talking about of the girl writing, and you said it's heavily Photoshopped because you were being snooty about your retina MacBook.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He sent us the Shutterstock image. So he just Googled image search, which we should have done, and it came back. It's just a Shutterstock image that they put the scribble pen in this girl's hand and drew a bunch of, like, children's crayon markers on the paper. So that got me thinking, and I wanted to shoot them an email because they had a general contact email. So this is what I sent them. I said, my name is Brad Dowdy, and I write the blog, The Pen Addict, and record the podcast of the same name. My listeners – my readers, listeners, and myself have a huge amount of questions surrounding the scribble pen that are not answered anywhere in your massive PR push. I'd love to have you respond to these questions via phone or email, and you have an open invitation to address these questions on the podcast. Please let me know. So I just had four little quick questions. I said, number one, can you provide a link to the pen in action? I'd like to see the actual ink output of the scribble ink plus a video of the product in action. Photoshopping a stock photo isn't very reassuring. And I sent them a link to the photo that Yippee-Ki-Yay sent us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Secondly, I asked, what's the standard line width in millimeters of the scribble ink? It looks gigantic and in no way will it be able to produce the output like the bird drawing on your homepage in its current state. Are there tip nib size options that make this fine of line? Number three, what is the formulation of the ink? I see you mentioned it as water-based. Is it pigmented, permanent, light, fast, archival? What attributes does the ink have? And number four, which was the question I'm most interested in, what other projects have Mark Barker and Robert Hoffman designed and shipped? Those are the names attached to this project, which we didn't talk about last time. But it's in their standard PR document, and those are the names that come up. And just searching online, those guys pretty much don't exist. You know, Mark Barker doesn't come back anything, and Robert Hoffman, some actor. You know, his name is cross-pollinated with an actor in Hollywood who I don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I sent that on Sunday. I actually did get a response Monday morning. So it says, So what do you think about that response?

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's not really a lot there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's a little bit lacking, isn't it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Especially, there are absolutely no real answers to anything that you've asked.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So this is, yeah, go ahead.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The important parts, like why have you Photoshopped a stock image? Mm-hmm. And who are these people? Mm-hmm. You know, nothing to those.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, nothing. So this seems to happen to us a lot when we start digging in.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, people don't like to be responsive. We're like investigative journalists.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, and we shouldn't have to be. No. This is basic. This is like 101 type of stuff. I mean, I'm not being a jerk. Just tell me a little bit of something. You know, help me feel good about spending $150 on this product. Right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I just shot off a quick response because I was nonplussed with Kevin for the Scribble team's response. I said, thanks for the info, Kevin. What day do you expect the video to be available? Can you share a picture of the output now? What will the various tip sizes be? And what other projects have Mark Barker and Robert Hoffman designed and shipped? So that's where we're at right now. I've got no response, and I expect none from this point forward. So we'll see. It's an interesting – what's your take on this pen? Like, Josh, would you use this pen? Like, if you saw this, did you go, ooh, ah, I can write, you know, every color in the world and draw it on my field notes and make them all fancy? Or were you like, what is going on here?

'''Josh Ginter:''' You know, I thought the website looked good. But that's the extent of it. I just – like, your skepticism kind of wore off on me, and I right away thought, like, this is far too good to be true. And if we're living in, you know, the year 2050 already, like, cool. But I just – I don't think so.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I think it's – I mean, they are definitely trying to sell something that's really too good to be true. And if they can deliver on it, great. You know, we're not saying this is – I mean, the term vaporware has been thrown around a lot in my Twitter feed, Myke. And I'm certainly not going there. I mean, this may be a perfectly fine product. And I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt until we see some more, especially until we see some more output. It doesn't sound to me, just in the response that I got, that they're very far along in this at all.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So that's what I got the most out of this. So I don't know why they do this big PR push, and now it's just going to sit here.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I mean, did they give a launch?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, no. They just said, coming soon on Kickstarter, sign up for our newsletter. That kind of stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, see, that's not –

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But they haven't even figured out the ink yet. And that's kind of important for a pen that writes every color in the world, right? It seems to me that would be like the most important part. Mm-hmm. So skepticism remains. But, you know, benefit of the doubt does too until we see some more. But I don't know that I'm going to get any more.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Who is Kevin?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's Kevin for the Scribble Team.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Come on. Oh, the Scribble Team.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Kind regards, Kevin for the Scribble Team. He's – yeah. Who knows? That's who replied to my email. So anyway, open invitation to the Scribble Team to come on this podcast or give me a call or give me some real answers. I'd welcome it. But, yeah, I think we're done with that until we see some more reality from this product.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. What say you – yep. Yeah. I don't want to drag this through the mud, but –

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I mean, unless they contact us now, I guess we'll kind of leave it. Oh, sure. And then wonder if we ever see it on Kickstarter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. We will definitely be paying attention. So, you know, we talk about these things because this is what the listeners want, you know, and are interested in. So, you know, I try to at least follow up a little bit on it with the actual product manufacturers themselves. So I'll get what I can. And I'll do what I can. So I'll stay on them. But, yeah, we're good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cool. Shall – now, we've got a couple of sponsors this week. We also have a bunch more – so much more stuff to talk about. My gosh, yeah. We have a ton more follow up and then we still haven't even started speaking to Josh yet. So shall I talk about our friends at Pen Chalet? Yes, sir. And then we continue from there. How does that sound? Please do. Josh, you get a vote in this. How do you feel?

'''Josh Ginter:''' Oh, I'm looking forward to listening to the Myke Hurley read one of these sponsor things. I'm so excited.