Rotring Tikky Liner Gel Ink Pen 0.3 mm Review

A recurring theme for the past few months has been my newfound love for all things Rotring. It’s not that the love wasn’t there before, it’s that the availability and accessibility to the product is much greater now. One can argue that today’s Rotring (as part of the Newell Rubbermaid conglomerate) is a much different product than it was in the past, but my focus is on the present. How do Rotring’s current products compare to other similar products on the market?

The first word that comes to mind is expensively. If you have compared a Rotring pen or pencil to another comparable pen or pencil then your know what I mean. Rotring products are more expensive, usually around two times as much as similar products. But are they a good value? That is the more important question.

The Rotring Tikky Liner is a good pen, but I would hesitate to call it a good value. The design is beautiful, the feel is great, and when the ink flow gets going it is a great writer. Open up the original size photo in Flickr and you will see what I mean. I love how it performs - when it performs.

That is the problem with the Tikky Liner. I am finding the ink cartridge to be very fussy and frustrating. It is widely know that the Pilot Hi-Tec-C needs a little warm up before heading off to the races. Two or three seconds of scribbling and it is ready to go for as long as you are. With the Tikky Liner, two or three minutes often wasn’t enough to get the ink flowing.

If a pen is going to cost this much the frustration level needs to be a lot lower. I can’t help but reach for it at least once a week, but more times than not I am reaching for a different pen within a few minutes.

Pilot VBall BeGreeN 05 Review

The Pilot VBall is a pen that has been around for years and has a large following. I know several readers would consider it one of their all-time favorites. What I don’t understand about the VBall is why isn’t it easier to find on store shelves? It is one of Pilot’s main pen lines, but I had to resort to Amazon to get a pack of my own to review. And I have had it on the radar for years.

Admittedly, I’m probably being too hard on Pilot. The VBall Grip and VBall Retractable are EVERYWHERE and use the same ink. I have used both of those pens, but I wanted the original VBall experience in the original VBall barrel design. Have you seen one of those on the shelf recently?

I settled for the VBall BeGreeN, which is a fine choice considering it is made from 81.6% recycled content. As happy as I am to be environmentally conscious, what I really wanted to know is how well the VBall writes.

I think my expectations were too high.

Liquid ink is challenging, especially in finer tip sizes. The VBall ink is wetter than I remember, more so than the VBall RT that I reviewed years ago. This causes my handwriting to not have the clean edge that gel or plastic tip pens provide.

When I bought this pen, I was hoping that it would find a place in my regular writing arsenal. Unfortunately it has been relegated to backup status.

Pilot Explorer Extra Fine Black Review

Raise your hand if you remember this pen.

I certainly do, as it was one of my favorites growing up. The Pilot Explorer has a very unique design, especially for a pen whose heyday was back in the 80’s and 90’s. To a youngster like me, it looked like it was from outer space. The best part about the Exlplorer though was how it wrote. I remember fine, crisp black lines, unlike the majority of the pens on the market at that time. So how does it hold up today?

It hasn’t skipped a beat.

Seth from Good Pens was kind enough to send me one from a stash he found at a stationery store in Europe. He has been on a mission for a while to find a good source for the Explorer, but has run into dead end after dead end.

From all appearances, the Explorer has been discontinued. You can find some strays available from various online office supply stores, but more often than not they are out of stock. I have looked through every Pilot Pen foreign site to no avail. I have even emailed the store in Denmark where Seth found them and got no response.

So, Pilot Pen, if you are listening - where can we get these pens?

The Explorer is as good as many of the pens that Pilot has on the market today. They write similarly to the Pilot VBall RT Extra Fine, which is very popular. I loved using one again and I think on nostalgia alone this pen would sell very well.

Please bring back the Pilot Explorer!