Editing The Pen Addict 325/transcript (section)

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'''Brad Dowdy:''' But yeah, so is it fair for us to complain? I think that's the question I got the most. Not directly worded that way, but what are your expectations for companies who release anniversary products? So, like we bagged on Lamy for the Lamy 2000 Black Amber. That was the 50th anniversary of that pen. And, you know, pilots release these, you know, upper echelon pens for their 100th anniversaries. What do you expect from a company that's celebrating something huge in their history? Like, is it fair to complain that you didn't get what you wanted out of them? Did we set unfair expectations ahead of time that we're only setting ourselves up for failure? It's a little entitled, right? Sure.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Be like, you didn't give me what I wanted. But I figure any, you know, if a company wants to celebrate something, do they want to just celebrate it on their own? Right? Because if they're not interested in providing things for people to buy, that is something that more people can buy, then they may as well just have a little party in their office and hand out these pens to each other and leave it at that, right? Yeah. I feel like if you're going to go to the great lengths that Pilot have gone to publicize their 100th anniversary, you should recognize the people that have allowed you to stay in business for the last 100 years.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. This is not a small company with a niche customer base localized to, you know, smaller areas of Japan. This is a global corporation that probably every single person has a product of in their household at one time or the other, right? Whether they understand what Pilot is or not, that's besides the point. This is just the point I'm making is this is a large company and has lots of fans across, you know, all types of products that they use. So I don't know. Am I putting unfair expectations on them saying, hey, where's my pen? Yeah. I mean, I can admit that. But I'm also the hardest part I have looking at it is from a business perspective and trying to understand a large event like this to not praise the customers more than they were doing. You know, they're praying. This is like a huge pat on the back for them. Like it's like a self-flagellation thing, right? They're just that's what it looks like to me as opposed to celebrating the customer that put them in this place to begin with. That's what I'd like to see.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I mean, I agree with you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, but I also at the same time, I feel bad for complaining about this. I'm not really complaining about this. I totally am on board with what they've done. I just hope like, heck, this is not it. There's got to be more. I'm holding my hat on more. If it doesn't come October 1st, though, I think we're done. Like, I don't think we're getting it before and after for sure. Right. So we'll see. This has been quite an interesting topic. I just like, I mean, you know, and Japan certainly has traditions that we may not be considering. Like, I don't, I won't profess to know, you know, the business and corporate structure that they have set up and how these types of things work. So I, we could be missing, flat out be missing something. But I'm just looking at it from a consumer perspective, from the outside world saying, man, I love this company and they're hitting 100 years. How can I, how can I celebrate that too? And I'm not getting to.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I understand that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Should we take a break? Yes. Today's show is also brought to you by our friends at Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace. They will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project. With Squarespace, you can grab a unique domain name. You can customize and take advantage of beautiful award-winning templates and have everything backed up with award-winning 24-7 customer support. Squarespace has all of the tools that you're going to need to put your project online, no matter what type of project it is. If you want to sell stuff, you can do that. If you want to write stuff, you can do that. If you want to post your music, you can do that too. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that will let you take care of anything. There's nothing to install, patch, or upgrade. They have got you covered. Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month. But you can sign up for a trial today just by going to squarespace.com slash penaddict. It's a full trial. You can go in, play with it, build your entire website. You can even have people take a look at it for you as well. And then when you're ready to set it out live to the world, you just sign up for a plan. And you can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain when you use the offer code penaddict at checkout. So once again, that's squarespace.com slash penaddict. And the code penaddict to get 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show and RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Lots of companies we've shouted out. Companies, please. People and friends we have shouted out are big fans of the Squarespace too, Myke. So I love seeing all the pen blogs. I did have some more shout outs this week that I asked for submissions last week. And Jake's Take on YouTube reached out. He said, hey, I feel kind of weird doing this, but you said I could do it. And I'm like, yeah, man, come on, Jake. Give me your take. So Jake's Take's on YouTube. He reviews Fountain Pens, other stationery. So we'll have the link to Jake's Take. And you can go follow him on YouTube. Please do. And then our friend Chad Doan, Myke, I saw this tweet the other day. The Doan paper idea journal, the big one, landed in a TV show. And he has a screenshot from the episode. It's a 10-part documentary, America to Me. It's on the Stars Network. I haven't seen it. I haven't heard of this show. But I see the teacher in the classroom with the large idea journal. And I'm thinking, how rad is that? I mean, that's just cool to see, isn't it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's just like a nice thing, right? It's like, oh, look, I'm on TV. It's like, it's a great feeling.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah. You think we'll see one of the seven lucky gods on that show anytime soon?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Probably not.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I'm gonna go with no on that one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Probably not.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Never rule anything out. And then our good friends, which I got to shout out, Myke, Marco, and Tiffany Arment. Top four school supplies. Yes. So this is the most recent episode of the Top Four Podcast, which I'll tell you right now is my kid's favorite podcast, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hey, that's cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They want to hear all the episodes when they come out. They love it. It's their favorite show. And I figured we don't have to do our top four supplies, or we can, or we can do like a draft, which we've done before. But I don't know. Maybe we'll just say what we're... So here's the thing. Me and you went to high school, like in elementary school and middle school, the school supply premium years at much different times in the world's history.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So there are many different products. So it may not, like a school supply draft probably wouldn't work for us. So let's just talk about maybe some of our favorite supplies. I knew what one of yours was going to be.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, so some of mine were actually covered on the episode, but I've done some thinking today about some of the stuff that I like. So here's my top four. All right. Yikes pencils. Spoken about those a bunch there. These crazy pencils with these wild colors and mental erasers. They were really, really awesome. Then, I don't know if... I really struggled to find out information about these today. But it's what I am calling pencil cases with secret compartments. And I think that they are referred to as Flowmo pencil cases. And I've got like an Etsy link here. I'll find some other links. I found some better links earlier today. And I seem to have posted a weird one in the chat. So these were these pencil cases that had buttons on them. And you could press the buttons. And they would open up these little secret compartments and drawers.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. So I have never seen this before. And I'm flipping through one of the pictures. And on the backside of the case, there are buttons that say one, two, three, four. Are those the buttons you're talking about? So you hit one and a certain part of the case opens?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So like a little drawer might pop out of the side. I have never seen this before. These feel like they were very much a thing of the 90s. And then they stopped. And like there's stuff you can buy that's like this now. But not so much. These are rad. They were so awesome. Because you had all these little hidden compartments. You could put some in.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They had to break constantly too, right? That's probably a pretty good market for kids.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They were very temperamental. B-roll, barrel, handwriting pens. These were like the thing in school for me. This is like when you went up from writing with pencil to writing with pen. These were the pens that we had in primary school. Everybody in the UK knows what these things are. They're made by Paper Mate. And they're these red pens. And they have like these plastic kind of plasticky feeling nibs. And then it's like a washable ink. Really great. Like they're just fun to use. And they're like very much a thing. And then my last item is Fun Facts by Filofax. I have a post here from all things stationary, right? Because having also been in... I think me and Tessa are around the same kind of age. And being in the UK, if you were a stationary nerd, you 100% had Fun Facts. And what I love is that Tessa also puts a picture of the Spy File Fun Facts, which was my favorite Fun Facts. They were like... So the Filofax system, right? Is an organized date system. But the Fun Facts was a kid's version where they had like all of these little inserts that you could buy that were about wildly different things. So like for example, in the Lincoln or Thing Stationery, there is an insert for face painting and a beginner's guide to fishing. They had everything. And you would just take them out and they were little things. They had like little books you could read and exercises you could take. And then the Spy File had a bunch of like things to be a spy, right? Like how to be a spy. They were awesome. And because I was such a nerd, I took my Fun Facts to school with me because I was a big, big nerd.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Your products are way more fun than mine ever were. Like I remember, I didn't put this on my list, but like the most fun product I ever had was when every year I go back to school, the National Football League pencils came out. So you got a pack of the team pencils and, you know, one of each team in the league. And, you know, you always picked out your favorites and, you know, chucked the rest or did whatever. Like that was fun for me back in the day. But the products I remember using the most and the first one on my list is just, I can't imagine what their market is now for this, but liquid paper. Liquid paper was such a big thing when I was in school because you could do so many things with it that were not school related, right? This is how like you marked on things. You made artwork with it. You'd put different layers down and color them. You'd sniff them. Liquid paper was like gold. It was a gold mine back when I was in school. And let's just set the record here. And I hate to say this, but I graduated high school in 1989. So this was a long time ago. And I remember like when the liquid paper pens came out, that was like when I was in college. And those were like, oh, awesome. But like no one, my kids wouldn't know what liquid paper is now, right? Because they don't have to like overwrite anything. They don't have to turn in a handwritten paper that has to be spelled correctly, right? They're, you know, can just backspace on the keyboard and, you know, fix that. So liquid paper was like a mandatory school supply when I was in school to correct all your writing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And it's called TipX. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' TipX. Yeah. It's not something you see now at all. I mean, the brand's still around, but, and I'm sure they're into the tapes now. And if you ever even need that, but it's just not a market for a liquid paper anymore. No one needs to correct anything. Tiff definitely had one of mine, but mine was a different level. Hers was a different level of awesomeness. I should say mine was basic. The Trapper Keeper came out when I was in, in school. And I remember the very first versions, it was just a red, green, and blue. And then they just had like a white racing stripe, like around the cover. Those were the ones that I had. I think I had a green one first, something like that. I don't know that's sticking in my head. But what was fascinating about those, it was an all plastic build. So it wasn't like the greatest build. So like the three ring binder part of it was these plastic things that you had this little slider mechanism to use, but it would have like a built-in pencil case and you could put all your folders and papers in there and it'd fold over the top with like a Velcro. It's like a little, like you're a little professional man walking around with your little folio, you know, thing walking around to, to your different classes. And, you know, you were super cool that way.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I think that the fun facts is very similar in what it was made for as the Trapper Keeper. Right. Because it was about this thing. It's like makes you feel like an adult. Right. Right. And they seem to both have that, that kind of aspect to them. And that's what kids want the most. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So what are my parents using? I'm going to look, I'm going to do those things too. And, you know, the Trapper Keeper continued on and to be, to come really, really huge. Like later, like Tiff was talking about, you know, all her Lisa Frank designs. Those are like the most, the most famous ones at the time, like late nineties ish. So, but I remember when they first came out, that was such a big deal to have one because they weren't cheap either. Like this stuff's expensive. Like at the time when, you know, you're having to buy all these school supplies, like, wow, that was probably like 10 bucks or something like that, which was outrageous. The pen I use the most is actually still made today. A little different style, but it's called the Pilot Better Ballpoint. It's a terrible name because it's not that good of a pen. Like I don't really think it's better than most ballpoints, especially today. But back in the eighties, this was the finest tip ballpoint I could use. And everything I ever wrote or used as far as a writing instrument, all focused on how small I could write. So the Pilot Better Ballpoint was the one I used. The link, I actually were, I reviewed the retractable model on the pen addict back in 2011. But the model I used back in school was a capped version and had this kind of shaped cap, looked like a little, you know, half pipe looking thing. It was very, very tricky. But they had clear barrels and they had a couple of different colors besides blue and black. I remember green, red and purple. And you could write really fine and really small with them. And most importantly, back then is they were still a good spitball barrel for, you know, class shenanigans. I don't know if kids are still into spitballs these days because they're not using as many pens as we used to. But, you know, that one always competed very well in Spitball Wars. It worked out just fine. The last one and was the one product I had to have every year and I was very specific about it was the Mead five subject notebook. So I wanted, I didn't want five notebooks for five classes. I wanted one notebook for five classes. So this one was divided with folder separators in between, like separating into five sections. And it had to be college ruled. Like my small writing didn't look good on traditional ruled paper. So I had to have like the college ruling and it had to have the plastic cover of the Mead, you know, like the five star Mead with the plastic covers because they were cooler and more durable. And then I had to have the folder pockets in between each section and then all my classes would go in there. And invariably the least, the class I hated the most would have like two pages of that section filled while the classes that I liked, I would have like the whole section filled and have extra paper. So there'd be some blank, some more blank sections than other by the end of the semester with those notebooks. So those are kind of the things I remember the most about my school days, mostly high school days. I don't remember too much about when I was even younger what those things were. So that was fun. It was fun to go back and listen to that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I enjoyed that episode a bunch.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like I totally missed the calculator like fascination. Like I had, we had calculators like just at the, just at the time. And then you came kind of after that, right? Where you didn't need that anymore. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We didn't do the graphing calculator thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So they were in, Marco and Tiff were like in the peak calculator era, you know, right when computers were getting popular, but not everyone had access to one.