Second Annual META-REVIEW Pensplosion ARGHHAGH

so many links

Happy New Year! It’s time for our second annual look-back-and-preview post!

In this post I’ll go over some 2024 stuff, clean up some stuff I promised (and then forgot to do) from last year’s post, and then preview some upcoming reviews and discuss the future of this blog.

Stuff that stayed inked all year, mostly

I generally only keep a handful of pens inked at any time, which has worked pretty well in terms of not losing any of them or having them get damaged because the ink dried in the feed. These three, however, I kept inked pretty much all year.

Kind of a diverse grouping! The only real through-line here is that my wife bought them for me. Quick recaps:

• The Pineider Avatar TTT (left, review) continues to be a solid, comfortable, fun pen for daily writing, and I keep it in constant use despite it also being the pen that exploded on me during a flight.

• The Monteverde Tool (middle, review) continues to have a level, screwdriver, and stylus, and as a result it lives on the coffee table in our living room. It’s been inked since I got it in 2023 and still writes as soon as it’s uncapped, which honestly amazes me given that this is a fountain pen with a screwdriver.

• And the Montegrappa Skulls and Roses (right, review) continues to have skulls and roses and be my Very Nice pen that I am determined to use as much as possible.

Stuff I said I was going to review and then didn’t

Last year’s version of this post included the below picture of stuff I was going to review, plus a promise to talk about my annual attempt to try and use the Lamy 2000. I did a B+ job there; links to the ones I did review are in the caption. As to the stuff I forgot to do, we’ll clean that up after the picture.

Huge Black Panther Pen // Pineider Avatar TTT // Narwhal Original Plus // Pelikan Twist, Modern Version // Rotring Core Clickmaster 900x // GIOIA Partenope // Shibui North Dragonfly // Opus 88 Koloro

Narwhal Original Plus (orange pen, left)

A very good and inexpensive vacuum-filler, which basically got covered in the posts about the Pineider Avatar. It just works very well and is very sturdy. Could benefit from some skulls or dragons.

Pelikan Twist, Modern Version (light blue pen, center)

Vintage version of this pen was covered here, and this one has the same basic idea: a dumb plastic pen for children and peculiar adults.

Some of the changes are good: it’s bigger, sturdier, and shows a much more literal use of the “twist” concept. Other changes, not so much: it has zero kangaroos, a huge loss of kangaroos, and a demonstrated anti-Australian bias. Overall, though, it’s a good pen if you want something different than a Safari or Kakuno and suffer from salirephobia.

Opus 88 Koloro (yellow and white pen, right)

A nice, full-sized pen on the smaller side of full-sized pens. The material is super grippy, the nib works really well, it holds a ton of ink—basically, it’s an Opus 88, and they make good pens.

I think I wish they were a little louder; they’re more “plus” than “extra,” which meant I never came up with a good angle to talk about it other than “it’s a good pen, you should try it.” This is EXTRA Fine Writing, after all.

My Fourth Annual Attempt To Use The LAMY 2000

Verdict: NOT SUCCESSFUL. I did discover that it’s easier for me to use the Lamy 2000 (original review) if I post the cap, because the extra weight makes the pen’s lack of a grip much easier to manage. But the lesson is still the same: there is no perfect pen, nothing works for everybody, and anyone claiming otherwise is lying unless it is Sylvester Stallone and the pen is the Montegrappa Chaos.

2025 Preview and Future of Blog

OK: now that we’re all caught up, let’s talk about 2025. We have, of course, a review queue full of goofy stuff:

That’s right: in addition to a pen made of a literal shark,¹ this year’s reviews will include bangers like the Jean-Pierre Lepine Death By Chonklate and the Monteverde No Bad Ideas in Brainstorming, not to mention the Visconti Floppityfloop and the Pineider Huey Lewis And The News (not shown).

You can also expect that I’ll continue to have more writing- and publishing-focused posts as I gear up to release my first novel this spring, as well as some more short-story-formatted posts, like the one about vintage pens. These have gone over pretty well based on the back-end data, and they also help me mix things up since I’M NOT MADE OF PENS, YOU GUYS.²

I’ll be serializing most if not all of the novel on a different, dedicated Substack—I’ll copy subscribers over there so you can get it (if you like this blog, you’ll like that, too) but also so you can easily opt-out if you just want to stick with stationery stuff. Stay tuned!

1. the sharkskin is sourced from restaurants so technically it’s also an edible pen

2. for new people: this is a hobby blog I do for fun, so all of these are pens I bought or received as gifts from family or, one time, my home inspector—point being, I do not have infinite pens