Two boring pens that I like anyway

I use these a lot even though they have no skulls or sparkles

Aren’t boring pens the worst? With their conventional pen-shaped pen body, lack of sparkles or skulls, and not being made by Italians?

Yeah, exactly. Boo pens that look like pens.

Except sometimes they are, despite being totally lame, pretty fun to use. It’s a complicated fun, of course, the type where you have to balance the joy of writing with the fact that you are not using a pen that looks like a parrot or scorpion or the skull-faced scepter of R’lyah, but still.

In that light, here are two pens that are just regular old pens but still worth buying because they do the “writing” part pretty well and that’s, like, something.

The Platinum Procyon

as you can tell, the pen is currently inked because I am using it right now even though I have many skull-covered and sparkly pens I could be using instead what is wrong with me please send help

I got the Procyon in a subscription box and was like “eh.” First, the negatives on this pen are obvious:

• Some sparkles, but not, like, a lot of sparkles

• No skulls

• Not shaped like a parrot head or scorpion

• Not camouflage so minimal tactical utility

• Made of aluminum instead of antler or fossilized bog oak or something

• Nib is pretty basic-looking

• Looks like a regular blue pen and not a scepter or submarine

Normally that would be enough to kill the vibe. But despite this pen being very boring for me to look at, I end up using it a lot. Here’s why:

• It never dries out. Platinum has “slip ‘n seal” caps, a phrase that makes me uncomfortable for a reason I can’t really articulate, but it’s basically a spring-loaded cap that keeps the pen from drying out—and it works, like, incredibly well. It seems to never dry out. (Avoiding dry-out generally appears to be an area where Platinum excels—here’s a Youtube video of a guy who ran an experiment with Goldspot where they left a Platinum Curidas inked for six months and it still wrote immediately and that is a retractable fountain pen.)

• Nib is really, really solid. I don’t have any other Platinums so I don’t know if this is a universal thing with them, but the Fine nib has a really satisfying amount of feedback that I really enjoy when I’m writing and not just looking at the pen.

• The blue color I have is called “Deep Sea” and the ocean is terrifying so that’s kind of metal maybe?

• It’s a sturdy, full-size, metal pen with a matte finish that somehow weighs only 2 grams more than my Kaweco Lilliput, which is kind of amazing.

In conclusion: I love this stupid pen, even though every time I take it out of storage I’m like “womp womp, so bored.” The Procyon is a current model and is available pretty much everywhere; it costs around $60 at the time of writing.

The Super5 fountain pen

The Super5 fountain pen is made by Super5 and as far as I can tell the model name is just “fountain pen.” I got it in an art supply store in Gothenburg, which is only relevant because now you know I went to Gothenburg. That’s where Volvo is headquartered!¹ How glamorous!²

And look: this is probably not the best-made pen from a cosmetic perspective. You can tell from where the clip attaches to the body that it was originally black, but the black coating started to flake off. I peeled the rest of it off so it looked like it was supposed to be shiny.

Then there is this little bit under the cap where the pen body is deformed and that fact escaped QA. It came in a sealed box so I didn’t realize this until it was too late.

And then the blind cap (the pen butt) screws off for some reason. I thought maybe it was because you could then turn the converter without having to unscrew the whole barrel, but this is actually more work than just doing it the regular way. I know this isn’t a problem, but I’ve had this pen for three years and this still puzzles me.

And of course, it looks like a regular old pen.

BUT: two big positives that make me use it over and over.

First, it might be the most forward-weighted pen I have ever handled, comically so. The body is made of plastic and the grip is, I’m guessing, made of brass or steel. I put it on my kitchen scale and the pen weighs 17 grams when uncapped. The barrel makes up just 3 grams of that, so basically the entire pen is just the grip. This is actually kind of nice and I like it.

Second, it has an untipped, 0.5mm stub nib, which is really why you’re going to buy this thing—basically, you are buying a specialty nib that comes with a free pen body. Ever since Nemosine went out of business some years back this type of thing has been tricky to find and I really like these weird small italics for writing subheadings with some interesting line variation.

I noticed after taking this picture that the black finish is now flaking off at the top of the grip too ughhhhhhh

And of course, the fact that I got it in an art supply store also indicates that this is, basically, an art pen—meaning the point is that it makes a weird little italic line, not that it’s trying to appeal to the fine writing world. In that light the cosmetic construction issues are forgivable, especially given the price (and the most annoying issues could be avoided if they didn’t put the black coating on it in the first place).

All in all, it’s a pen that occupies the same “womp womp, it’s boring but I like it” space as the Procyon—sometimes you just want to make weird little italic lines, and this one does that really well.

Super5 is a German company and your best bet to find one outside of Europe seems to be Amazon, as the manufacturer’s website does not appear to recognize non-German zip codes. You can get the 0.5mm in clear for about $40 at time of writing, and they have a 0.7mm nib size as well. (They’re cheaper if you buy them in Europe, I think.)

1. Also a pretty solid steampunk bar, which I think was pretty close to the art supply store and, the last time I checked, amazingly survived the pandemic.

2. It is also, of course, the home of Swedish death metal and a small enough town that if you wear a t-shirt of a death metal band from Gothenburg you will run into someone who is like “oh, neat, when I see Johannes tonight I’ll tell him I met an American who has one of his shirts on.” I know I have a sample size of 1 but I feel comfortable that this is probably a universal experience so go ahead and try it yourself. (It’s a cool city, in all seriousness.)