While perusing the local Toys ‘R’ Us for more car x pen match ups, I was surprised to find that Tomica had released a series of diecast miniatures based on designs from Tamiya’s Mini 4WD series. The originals had ABS chassis onto which you would attach your choice of electric motor, gear box, standard or differential geared wheels, etc and a colorful PET plastic shell over it.
My brother and I had lots of fun customising these little racers… and seeing the perennial favorite ‘Avante Jr’ model once more in blue, black and yellow really pushed the nostalgia buttons for me.
Seeing the rugged suspension struts on the box art also suddenly reminded me of a trio of rarely seen Platinums: the BSU-1500 SUSPENSION BALLPEN series.
I had picked these up in the early 2010s but have never seen them in a catalog before. Using the Wayback Machine showed them on the Platinum website from around 2006. Their obvious draw is the suspension strut inspired design, and they worked using a finicky tip-push mechanism also found on the Bee Line ballpoints (and also on some Sailor pens as well). The actual refill is just a standard D1.
Honestly, the blue pen is already wonky and won’t deploy reliably, but I can’t bear to discard, sell or trade it away. Does anyone else have pens or pencils like this?
Bonus: I included an unidentified white Pelikan BP with an exposed top spring. If anyone knows the model name etc, I’d love to know more.
The pens are top notch. Reminds me a bit of the Antou industrial design attitude, but a bit more NUTS!
All of your crossover posts really make me wonder: Roughly what percent of the pencil designs and packaging are actually inspired by / credited to / licensed collaborations and what percent are just your pairings of similar themes, shapes and colors?
A quick check says: of the roughly 45 car-pen pairings I’ve done so far, about 15 of them involve direct co-branding (Honda City x BOXY, Ferrari BB 512), related design connections (Giugiaro for Parker and DeLorean, Pininfarina for Ferrari and Parafernalia), etc. The rest (roughly 2/3) involve more arbitrary styling connections like colors, design themes, names (Mistral winds) or visual similarities.
Thank you for the thorough analysis. It is comforting to know that it is less than half. I was beginning to fear that I am far too oblivious and don’t notice the interconnected marketing web all around me or the preponderance of shared branding across varied markets. But I am still quite impressed that 1/3 of the posts do feature a real intention at collaboration or licensed branding. That is some heavy reliance by pencil makers on the prestige of unrelated markets to sell pencils.
No, the springs are static and kind of act as the grip. When you press down on the tip, the refill snaps out and the ‘tail’ end extends from the housing.
The spring as a grip is still pretty cool! I cannot find anything online for this particular pen but it looks like there are pen maker kits that are similar. Mostly capped pens.
I reverse image searched it and found this Korean forum post from 2019 but it does not offer much info other than a comment mentioning that there was only a ballpoint pen release.
