Editing The Pen Addict 474/transcript (section)

== Kickstarter Update ==


'''Myke:'''  I just like saying color puddle. I like color puddle. To me, it's like a little inkwell thing, which I would probably never use. But it looks like a nice little thing to put on the desk. Honestly, I thought it looked like a nice little fidgety desk toy, maybe. Yeah.

'''Myke:'''  Yeah. I'm still excited about this product, but it's just the Kickstarter campaign has been quite complex. And now they have added more complexity to it, right?

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So when I did my unboxing and kind of mini review, the one thing that I constantly talked about was the length of the barrels. They're all relatively short. And not relatively short. They were short, right? They didn't get kind of over the, you know, your thumb and index finger area, like that kind of little cusp in your grip there. It was pretty low. And like it was fine and usable for me because I don't really have trouble with small pins, but some people do. And that would just eliminate them from literally any offering that Drillog had except for the twin spiral that you bought. Because since it has two caps and room for two nibs, one of the caps screws on the back of the pin, making it a more standard, lengthy pin. And so what Drillog smartly did, even though the Kickstarter process doesn't make you feel smart when you're going through it because of the way this is set up. And this is not Drillog's fault. They have lengthened the standard barrel, the standard aluminum barrel Kickstarter by, oh, I don't have the images pulled up, but a decent amount, like an inch. I can bring it up. It's going to be a really good length.

'''Myke:'''  It's from 75.5 millimeters to, oh, I'm confused because they've got, it's a size range.

'''Myke:'''  95.5 to 100.5. I don't think they've decided on the final dimension. Okay. Yeah. So it's not available yet. 95.5 millimeters to 100.5 millimeters.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So they said at the end of August, they'll know which one it's going to be.

'''Myke:'''  It's basically 20 to 25 millimeters larger.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. And like, I'm going to have to go in and change my pledge to this longer barrel because it is going to be better. If you, if you ordered the classic barrel, the classic material AL, which is just the, the cylinder. And a lot of them are anodized colors. You're going to like the longer length of it. Like you, it doesn't matter, Myke, because you're going to end up getting like a long length pen.

'''Myke:'''  Yeah. And also, I mean, for me, I wanted the twin one because it's just, this is already a weird pen. I want to make it as weird as I possibly can, you know? That's the best.

'''Brad:''' That's my favorite barrel out of the bunch. But to use it effectively, you really do need two nibs. So you're adding a lot of cost in that. So I get it though. So that's the best barrel I've, I've felt, but so I backed it for the classic, but I will be switching to the longer, what I'm calling the drill log long boy. Oh boy. I will say they have it available.

'''Myke:'''  Look, this is confusing and it is complex, but on both of the things that have made it more complex, I actually tip my hat to them listening to what people want. But yeah, like people didn't want just the standard one. They also wanted the weird ones. So like, all right, we'll put them in. Yep. And then people like, this might be too short. So like, all right, we'll give you an option to make it longer. And yeah, it's tricky. Maybe this is tricky for a couple of reasons, right? Like one, it's hard to follow some of it in some places because there's like, there's a lot of Japanese on the page too, right? Which just makes it like really good. Like, you know, I'm not meaning to be mean or like, but like when I'm coming to the page, sometimes I don't know what I'm reading or like what I should be reading. So that can make it a tad tricky. And I don't know if this is just a kind of a byproduct of Kickstarter's Japanese like platform now. I feel like maybe they should split them out, right? But I don't know how it's working there. You know, because I have Kickstarter Japan. Nevertheless, because I can't imagine it makes it more helpful for people in Japan either to have a bunch of English on the page. Like it's just tricky. But it's also this other system like this, which I actually I applaud Kickstarter for having this. They should have this, right? Where like, yes, on their platform, you can add extras and make choices. So you don't have to have 70 options on the thing, right? So you're like, right. I want to go in on this level. And then on this level, I want these choices. And it's been bananas, I think, that they haven't had this. And like we were looking up, this is brand new, this feature. And Drillog is using it, which is the right thing for them to use. But it just adds to the overall confusion of it all. But I think it's great that they've done it. I will be astounded if they meet their November date. Because they keep adding stuff, right?

'''Brad:''' Where are we? Yeah. But like I'm not like for me, like I'm not going to buy more. I'm going to switch what I have. So it's not necessarily like a plus one that I'm getting. But I would have assumed that they will have more.

'''Myke:'''  They like pre-made a bunch of stuff. Skews. And like now it's like oopsies. Now we've got to. Yeah. You know, if we're going into end of August and they don't even know how big it's going to be.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. And it was the right decision. It was the right decision to do this. So they could have either taken the short barrel and threaded the back and allow you to post the cap or just make a longer barrel. Either way, I'd be fine. I don't necessarily need both options because then you just have more options. But the Kickstarter side of it is just this will make life easier for people, for curators in the future to just it's the easiest way to add on things up front without having to answer a lot of support emails. How do I add? I want to. How do I, you know, how do I manage my pledge to do that? And it was always a manual process. Well, now you can pledge for one and add the second one like on the next page. So it's good. But yeah. So Tokyo Inklings podcast. Jacob has done a lot of stuff with the drill log. He was one of the first ones to get the drill log living in Japan. So he's talked a lot about this. If you want some more. I finally been able to catch up on some podcasts and that's why I wanted to talk about Tokyo Inklings. I finally listened to like the last three episodes and they see why and Jacob do a lot of deep dive stuff that I really am glad that they do. So I don't have to do it. And nor do I want to do it. Like I've gotten a lot of emails about like, hey, what is Kaweco up to as far as like copyright and patent challenges they're putting on Moonmen in different countries and things like that. I'm like, you know, I really don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's like, okay, I've heard like the top level discussion of this and I'm not really tracking. Like I'm sort of tracking. But like Jacob and CY likes Kaweco put out a press release saying why they're actively like trying to attempt to protect their patents. And allegedly it seems like they're failing at doing that, which is probably the right answer.

'''Brad:''' But like you can go find out more from Tokyo Inklings. And that's why I wanted to make sure to bring them up today. Just the last episode, they covered this Kaweco PR mess that Kaweco is kind of digging themselves a hole. It's honestly not a great look. Like there's a couple different ways it can go. And it just doesn't seem like, seems like they're trying to fight some public opinion battle. And I don't, it doesn't really look great from what I'm seeing from Tokyo Inklings. And then they talk about like things like where we get a lot of our sailor information from CY and Jacob because they can get like sailors, you know, public PR releases because they're a public company. And their quarterly reports and their earnings reports. And they talked about how like sailors earnings are up. So maybe now's the time that plus is going to actually finally do the takeover because that's what plus was waiting for to get, you know, a lot of the books cleaned up and get the numbers running. Right. And you asked about the Hobonichi. Well, they found like the Hobonichi press release coming up. Hobonichi is using the old Tomoe River for this run of books. Like they've bought enough to be covered for this year. They haven't announced what they're going to do in 2022. But well, you know, for 20, that's actually probably 2023's launch. So we're about to launch 2022 stuff. All the 2022 stuff is going to be classic Tomoe River, just like you've always expected from your Hobonichi. So my point being here is y'all should listen to Tokyo Inklings podcast. Yeah, I'm behind too.

'''Myke:'''  Travel.

'''Brad:''' I save them. I save them depending on like I'm starting to listen to podcasts more. Like I always go in cycles with podcasts. So it's like an all or nothing thing. So right now I've listened to those last three episodes in, you know, the last three days probably. So it's good stuff and y'all should check them out. I got another pin. I want to talk about Myke. The Shown Design Brass Faceted Pocket 6. I finally got my review up on this. I've had this pin for a while. It's been out for a while. And I wanted to tell a little bit of the story about how I first saw the pin and why it was a memory for me being my last pin show that I attended in person. Baltimore 2020 pin show was like right before like the mega lockdowns started to happen. And I got to see this pin and I didn't buy one at the time. And then Ian kindly sent me one to review or to really to do whatever I wanted with. Well, I decided to use it and review it. And it's great. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because the DC pin show happened this past weekend. And before the pin show, Ian had started dabbling with this faceted design in aluminum, which I thought was really strange. Like the brass one looks cool and it makes a lot of sense with the brass having that extra weight and that thickness of the barrel, being able to handle all this design work on the exterior of the barrel. And it looks awesome. And I was like, oh, I would have never thought that would be an aluminum. And he did just like the basic raw aluminum type of pin body the last couple months. And then I saw pictures from DC. We'll put a link in the show notes from the gentleman stationer. Our friend Joe was at the show at DC. And he was talking about how he bought the actual the brass one that I reviewed here recently. But he had some pictures on Ian's table. And I saw this from other people at the show. So the aluminum faceted barrels have the wild anodizations that I like in Ian's other pins. Does that make sense that I finally get there from here? Yeah. So the aluminum barrels have like the pink and purple anodizations, which you don't see on the brass. And the faceting. They look really good. Yeah. They look awesome. So I saw some pictures.

'''Myke:'''  The pink and blue one I like the look of a lot. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So we'll have the link in the show notes. I think y'all should check. Just check this out. Like if you liked what you saw from this brass faceted review, Myke and I have talked about the Ian's pins for years and years since you were in DC with me. It was when we first really got into like the ballpoints, you know, and that's when we were buying like the Dexter pin and the Lisa Frank pin. And that's when he first kind of did the anodizations. And now just to see him like really escalate everything. Like I'm here for it. Like that's my jam. So I love it.

'''Myke:'''  What is this black Ultem? I thought you could only get Ultem in that weird brown color.

'''Brad:''' So it's the two colors. The amber Ultem has been the more popular of the two. Right. Or I don't know if it's maybe it's been an availability thing too. So there is a black Ultem option. And I don't know. Part of the part of the fun with these Ultem pins is they're really good for eyedropping. So you don't get to see the ink sloshing around as much in the amber. But also the amber is not necessarily everyone's favorite color. It's it's an odd color. I happen to like it a lot. But there is a black option and Ian selling those. And I would like to see that in person before I like jumped in on that one. I definitely love my amber. I have two Ultem pins. They're both amber models. And I would want to see the black. I'm sure it's great. But if I had a choice which one would I check out? You know which one would I like really really want? But I bet the black looks pretty cool. The material is so wild Myke. I want you to see one of these one day. Because it's it's hard to explain. It's air light. It's like it's like if a packing peanut was a pen. But the packing peanut was also indestructible. It's wild.

'''Myke:'''  Yeah I don't really know what that means. It's light.

'''Brad:''' It's lighter than any pen you own. And it it it kind of messes with you. Like in the feel of it. Like it's really thin really light. But really strong and cleans really well. So it's just a cool material.

'''Myke:'''  DC pen show.

'''Brad:''' Yes. Any regrets? Not going? No. No. Zero. I couldn't. Like I'm happy I didn't go. Yeah. If that makes sense. Like I'm totally happy that I was not there. I'm glad people went. I'm glad people had a good time. I would not have handled it well mentally.

'''Myke:'''  You just would it would have been uncomfortable for you? Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Yeah. Like I would have wouldn't have minded like going to the show and hanging out going to the show and walking around the show with the mask on. And then I probably would have just like gone to my room. And like there's no fun in that. Like part of the show is the people. Yes. And it's like I don't know that I would have wanted to just like hang out for like hours with around a lot of people. Yeah. If I didn't have to. So that's like that's just my choice right now. I don't have to go. So I'm okay not going. Like it's fine. There'll be shows next year. Hopefully we'll be back to normal.

'''Myke:'''  Yeah. I think that that's definitely the thing. Right. Like you could just go there and see it. But then all of the other stuff you can't really. I don't really think you can you can really participate in. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Like I would have I would have been fine if I live like locally and I would have gone and done a drive by and spent the day you know a few hours there at the show and then left.

'''Myke:'''  Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Which is why I just didn't want to travel. I don't want to put myself on an airplane. I don't want to go through the airports. I don't. It's just my headspace right now. Mm hmm. Especially with where I live. Like things are escalating where I live. It's making me uncomfortable just being out even though like my entire family is vaccinated. Like so you know it's an easy choice for me to make. And I just hope you know I just hope people that are going you know make make those right choices to you know make sure you're wearing your mask and clean you know washing your hands and doing all that stuff and keeping socially distanced and everyone has a has a good safe time. I'll just I'm going to keep waiting. I'm good.

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'''Brad:''' Speaking of Squarespace, Myke, penaddict blog, penaddict.com, proudly run on Squarespace forever, has had a little writing change, Myke. The awesome and amazing Susan Piggott's last post was a couple weeks ago. And Susan wrote for the penaddict for like six years. Like we have very little turnover in the writing crew at the penaddict. So Susan made a wonderful final post. She's got some life changes that's going to uproot her for the next year or so. So we'll have a link in the show notes. All positive stuff, though. All great stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just worth mentioning that. Just, yeah. But like no time to write for the penaddict anymore on a schedule. And like writing one review post a week is a lot of work for these writers. Like I don't want to undersell like how much effort it takes for one person to do one review per week on a schedule. It is more than you think. So Susan did that just amazingly for the past six years. And Sarah still going strong. Jeff, I'd have to go back and look. Jeff might have a decade under his belt at the penaddict. I don't even know at this point. Probably at least eight years, if not more. And then Sarah has been there for three or four. So it's crazy. It's crazy to see like, hey, Susan's not writing anymore. At least right now. At least probably for the next year. She's going to drop by, do some guest posts, things like that. So I had to fill her spot. Big shoes to fill. No pressure for my friend Kimberly Lau, who wrote her first post on the blog. She's going to be filling Susan's role where she's going to be like a permanent member of the pen addict review crew and writing a weekly post. She just wrote a, now the pen shows are happening. Now what? So it has some great tips. Like if you do go to a pen show, like how to be safe and how to respect, you know, other people's space and how to work with the vendors. And like, this is all new to us, even though like someone like Kimberly has been to two or three times as many pen shows as I have. It's still new for attendees and vendors in these pandemic times, like how to handle that. And she did a great job in her first post. She's probably going to do a DC recap, hopefully, one day. And yeah, I look forward to seeing Kimberly's work. So y'all definitely give Susan a big thanks and Kimberly a warm welcome because I'm excited and thankful to just have these awesome people in my life that want to do this.

'''Myke:'''  Very nice. Yep. You do have a great crew.

'''Brad:''' Really do. Really do. Um, you know, I, hopefully they have fun doing it. I think that they do by how long they hang around and put up with me. So yeah, it's great. I'm easy to work for Myke. I don't know if you know this, Myke. I'm.

'''Myke:'''  You are a good person though. Like when it comes to these things, cause it's like, if what you like is to review new pens, well, you brag against them all. So you will get your hands on it, you know, man.

'''Brad:''' You are the segue master today because I want to talk about a new pen and then I got my hands on Myke. And this could go up in the, the, what is Brad using, uh, section as well. But I wanted to give this its own little tidbit because I wanted to ask you what you think about the Estherbrook JR Pocket Paradise. So a little, uh, rewind. So Estherbrook, um, the new Estherbrook has made the SD and you know, it's a pen that I like and I like a lot actually. And they came out with the JR in kind of a throwback pen and you and I talked about it. And I can't remember what you thought about them the last time. Cause you've only been able to see them in pictures and I've had them in hand, uh, before. What was your thoughts on the JR and what do you think of the Pocket Paradise?

'''Myke:'''  I need to try and remind myself of the colorways of the JR. Yes. Is it JR or is it Junior?

'''Brad:''' I call it the JR. I feel like it's Junior. I think it's JR because it was the Estherbrook J was the main brand. Right.

'''Myke:'''  And I guess they haven't, they haven't lowercase the R that's both uppercase.

'''Brad:''' It must be Estherbrook JR. Although I think Junior is cute, but you know. I think Junior's cute because it is a smaller pen, but I think it's actually like J revisited. So like JR.

'''Myke:'''  Okay. I think that the new ones are really awesome. The old ones are a bit standard and maybe that was the point, like play it safe with colors and stuff. But I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the color choices that they have gone for here. They are really great and bold. And I think it's awesome. I love that they have the contrasting finials. Are they all blue?

'''Brad:''' No. The orange is on, let's see, yellow is on the blue pen and blue is on the orange and yellow pens on the finials.

'''Myke:'''  Okay. Yeah. I think they look fantastic. I think they look really fun. They're super fun pens. Very summer fun style. I'm into it.

'''Brad:''' So here's what I want to talk about. And I actually didn't link this in the show notes and I probably should have. This is what I wanted Parker to do when they relaunched the 51. And I hope this is the way it's going to go because Parker could do the same thing. Right. So they've redid the 51. They came out with the base colors. Right. The black barrel, the teal barrel, the burgundy barrel. Well, the Estabrook redid the J. Their vision of the modern J, they did the base colors. They did the blue and the black. And I can't remember the colors. It was three or four colors. Red. They did the basics. Now, round two, we drop the hammer, say, hey, this is what the future of Estabrook looks like to us. Right. And if Parker would do that with the 51, they would crush it. And I hope that's the path we're going to see from Parker, because I think Estabrook has the idea of modernizing the vintage name. Name alone, even if you don't disagree, like, I mean, it's a traditionally styled pen. Does it live up to the Estabrook J and what it used to be? No. No. And that was a lever filler with a sack. And, like, we're just not going to get that. With the J.R., they've said, hey, we're going to respect, you know, the idea of the old company. But we're going to build it in this modern way that the modern market would appreciate more than a rehash. And I think that's where Parker was missing the boat with the 51. Like, the 51, by, you know, all accounts, is a perfectly fine pen, the modern one. But make it special. Make it modern. I'm going to do it. Do what's – give me a round two. I'm not going to do it. They're not going to do it. I know. I tell you what. I tell you what. It's there. It is there, Myke. It is on the table and they cannot see it. Like, if they came out with just a basic, simple, orange barrel, silver cap, Parker 51, do you know how much hype they would get for that? It's so good.

'''Myke:'''  But the thing is, Estabrook, they have their foot in our community, right? Right. And they understand what the modern pen collector, pen aficionado wants in a way that I don't think Parker do or care about. Like, it's not their business, you know? So I don't think that they're looking.

'''Brad:''' I agree. I agree. They're a different company. They're owned as they're part of a conglomerate. And these companies that are part of a conglomerate tend to have different marching orders, if you will, as opposed to a company like Kenro, who marches to the beat of their own drummer. They get to make their own beats where I don't know that Parker gets to. It's just, God, to me, it's just like super obvious and it's not going to happen. It's just not. But that's why I just give credit to Estabrook and what they're doing with these pens. The pen itself, so I'm using the yellow model, which is just completely rad. It's got an extra fine steel barrel. It reminds me so much.

'''Myke:'''  I think the yellow is my favorite.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So it lost the poll. So Kenro sent me all three colors. And I did a Twitter poll. I said, hey, which color do you want me to give away? And blue and orange were like within a vote away from each other or two votes away. Orange won, but they were essentially one and one A. And then yellow was a distant three. And I'm like, sweet. I get to keep the yellow for myself. People are playing it safe, man. They just want the colors that they always get.

'''Myke:'''  You know, you want blue, you want orange. The reason I like the yellow so much is because it's rarer than to have that.

'''Brad:''' And it looks great. It feels great. It reminds me of the Pelican M205, like a Pelican steel nib. Even though it's not a piston filler, it's a cartridge converter. It's that same size, same weight, same feel. And just good. It's a good pen, right? Like, is it going to be like the top of my list for like the best pen and the perfect pen for me? No. Like, but it's awesome. Like, I want this pen to exist. And it's great. Like, I really love how they just like attack the market with this pen. And I think it's cool to see.

'''Myke:'''  Yeah, I like it. I like it.

'''Brad:''' All right. Last up, Myke. I did a thing that I've never done before. I wrote a forward for a publication. Okay. Have you ever done that before? Have you ever written a thing?

'''Myke:'''  No, nobody wants my thoughts.

'''Brad:''' But that's actually true.

'''Myke:'''  It's not good for anyone. Nobody wants that.