Reviewing skull pens on manliness, part one (BENU Minima)

NO GIRLS ALLOWED wait ok fine

You find yourself in a dilemma: you want to use your fancy little pens, but you also want everyone to know you are a manly man who beer guns sports GRAAAAAAAAAAAVEDIGGERRRRRRR!!!!!!!

hot wings

What should you do?

One word: SKULLS.

Writing with a skull pen is like showing MTV Cribs your Scarface poster. It is like talking about how alpha you are on a podcast. It is like being a crypto influencer sponsored by Dank Kraken NeuroBoost Gummies.¹ It is a basic marker of manhood.

Indeed, a skull fountain pen is the penultimate experience in manly writing. It is second only to Not Writing, Screaming Instead.

Unfortunately, the only perfect I AM A MAN YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH pen has been discontinued, so until Montegrappa revives the Chaos or Sylvester Stallone designs another pen you are going to be stuck with a lesser skull pen—which is OK, because unless you are Sylvester Stallone you are a lesser man anyway.²

shown: not you (image credit nibs.com)

Today we are introducing a new series to help you evaluate the manliness of these also-skull pens so you can decide which one is the right amount of alpha for you. The manliness of each pen will rated be on a scale of from 1-10, with the units of measurement being Stallones.

Enough setup! Let’s get into our first entry: the BENU Minima Skull.

The Skull is part of BENU’s Minima line. These are pocket pens and at first you might think “wait you tricked me small pens are for girls,” but hold on.³ Because while you might normally shy away from a pocket pen to avoid someone thinking you don’t even lift and therefore need a tiny little pen, you should know that this is a big pocket pen.

See? Huge.

In fact, it’s really a cargo pocket pen, perfect to live right next to that Leatherman that you carry just in case terrorists invade your office and you have to save everyone which will totally work because terrorists are famously afraid of pliers. It’s a great addition to a manly EDC.

Of course, this is the Minima Skull, so the pen has skulls on it. And not just one or two: I counted forty-four skulls covering the cap and the barrel. There is no part of this pen that does not have a visible skull.

This means you never have to worry about someone seeing you with your fancy pen from the wrong angle and then having to chase them three blocks so you can show them that in fact your fancy pen has a skull on it and is very manly and then it turns out they weren’t even looking at you and it’s a whole thing and now you’re not allowed in the public library anymore. Convenient!

Now, there is no clip or roll stop on this pen, and unlike other Minima models it is not faceted so it can roll away easily. But a real man does not need a clip or roll stop anyway; he keeps a pen on his desk by jamming it, nib-first, into a slab of raw beef.⁴ Accordingly, the lack of a clip or roll stop on this pen is a very manly plus.

All good so far! But, as we know, the pen is not the Chaos and therefore not perfect, so we must discuss its failings.

For example, the Minima Skull has a tiny little nib, which makes it hard to jam into an uncooked steak for storage. The industry standard for that is a number 8 nib (the “Van Damme”), while the Minima Skull uses a Who Cares It’s Smaller Than A Number 6.

Worse, the nib has no skulls or snakes or even a portrait of Robocop on it; it just says “Schmidt.” Points deducted!

Also, the skulls are smiling pirate skulls, not regular skulls. This may be a manly plus in your country; in America, however, this is a negative as the toughest pirate on our Pirates of the Caribbean ride is now a girl and therefore pirates are a girl thing for us.⁵

Finally, the pen smells like a pen and not gasoline or beard oil or bacon. This is actually fine but I feel I need to flag it as a missed opportunity given that BENU has recently introduced smell technology to their other pens.

In conclusion, the BENU Skull Minima is a respectable 5 out of 10 Stallones—somewhere between Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! Stallone and Judge Dredd Stallone. There are some strong manly elements, but also some misses that make it a solid middle-of-the-man-road offering.

You can buy it and some silver/gold-trimmed variants from BENU, and the black one is widely sold by BENU retailers.

1. now with 22% more alphasaurus-4 brain juice for that extra edge use my code at checkout for exclusive savings thanks guys it really helps the channel

2. if you ARE Sylvester Stallone then thank you for reading my blog ok now stop reading and go design another pen please thank you bye

3. ewww girls i know i know

4. the only exception to this rule is if the clip is a sword like on the Chaos, that’s fine // separately hey penquisition guys what if you made a 3D printed steak people could jam a pen into i mean think about it

5. according to the transitive property of cooties