Here’s a nice read during your Sunday morning coffee.
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The original Tikky script is one of my favorite things in pencildom 
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Is the nature of the Tikky Automatic lead feed mechanism similar to how the FC TK-automatic works? How does it rank among the automatic feed pencils in the sub $100 zone?
I wonder if anyone figured out the backstory behind rOtring choosing the name “Tikky” for this pencil.
The original rOtring pen was called “Tintenkuli,” the first mass produced stylograph. And that name quite literally means “ink pen” in German. When it became very popular, rOtring affectionately shortened the name to “Tiku.” In fact, in the realm of vintage stylographs, you will find some rOtrings named just “TIKU” instead of “TINTENKULI.” I’ve no idea if they adopted that shortened name in response to its use created by an adoring public, or if they coined it themselves.
During the prime era of the Tintenkuli, rOtring released a mechanical pencil based on the same design motif. They called it a “bleikuli.” CORRECTION: removed stupid mistake
“bleikuli” means lead pen, which fits into the whole naming convention established by rOtring. In addition there was also a “rollkuli,” which was a primitive kind of rollerball using liquid ink.
My guess is that they chose “Tikky” because it’s a catchy sounding name, a “lighter” version of their main products. It was also a more generalized name, because they released both pencils and ballpoints with the name “Tikky.”
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Yea I bet it just sounded good and worked well phonetically with the pens.
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Jeez I love those boxes. Old packaging….my weakness.
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I hear you. When I gradually picked up more and more of these over time, I’d find some little surprises. One had a message scrawled on the back of an instruction sheet. It was a “log entry,” of him having received the pen on a certain date and the kind woman who had gifted it to him.
It was years later when I began to appreciate the evolution of rOtring’s package styling. Choice of fonts. Usage of words. I’ll have to go through these again and take some better, higher resolution photos. And also obtain some quality containers to store them… right now they’re just in random cardboard boxes.
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Released the same year as the PD335 QC, 1979.
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No, it’s logical: Blei = lead and Kuli = pen, so the Bleikuli is a lead pen and the Rollkuli an RP.
Until recently I thought that Kuli is just an abbreviation for the long word Kugelschreiber (ball pen), but in fact Kuli was the word chosen by rOtring (a bit racist btw) and appeared before Kugelschreiber (Kuli nowadays is used in German as short word for Kugelschreiber).
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Sorry, my apologies. I looked back over it and scratched my head. Brain fart. It’s like I said 2+2=5. I think I better see someone. 
I had heard that “kuli” was supposed to be a racist word. Just looked it up and yeah… wow. It has a long history, hearkening back to slave labor (and hard labor) days. Has it faded from the daily lexicon enough that it can be used in the presence of foreigners from China, India, etc., and not be even considered for the past meaning?
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The word Kuli for Kugelschreiber is just normal, I guess only very few people know that it’s not just the abbreviation. Kuli as designation for a carrier e.g. at a hotel is very unusual and should not be used.
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Any Tikky experts here?
I’m looking through the catalogs and it appears that in 2008 when Sanford purchased rOtring, they changed the Tikky branding to say “Papermate Tikky by rOtring”
This only seems to be seen in 2008.
They are back to “Tikky” in 2009 and on.
Can anyone confirm that this branding only occurred in 2008?
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Chiming on on the dated use of ‘Kuli’. I believe we are open minded folks here, so in the context of historical discussion, I believe ‘Kuli’ is ‘Worker’, as in the similar sounding ‘Coolie’ that was used by British colonials to describe foreign dock workers. ‘Coolie’ was already familar to me from my school texts here in Singapore, so I wasn’t shocked when I encountered ‘Kuli’ as it was used by rOtring.
So, I always saw ‘Tinten-kuli’ as ‘Ink Worker’, and ‘Blei-kuli’ = ‘Lead Worker’. I don’t 100% buy the ‘Kuli’ = diminuitive of ‘Kugelschreiber’, because while ‘schreiber’ means ‘scriber’, ‘kugel’ means ‘ball’. So kugelschreiber is specifically for ballpoint pens, and I think German is kind of specific like that. Checking with Chat GPT 4o only gave me the sanitized explanation. Shame.
So, Tikk-Kuli for the ballpoint - I think ‘Tikk’ was based on the ‘click’ sound of the button? So… ‘Click Worker’? And over time, from 1950s to 1970s as the button became commonplace, ‘Tikky’ become a nickname and brand name for rotring’s button activated pens and pencils.
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As a German, I can confirm that “Kuli” is the widely used diminutive form of “Kugelschreiber”.
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Much appreciated!
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OK, so this bothered me and I went digging:
The explanation for the roots of ‘kuli’ and how it became synonmous with ‘kugelschreiber’ later feels logical to me. When the Tintenkuli was launched in 1928, there were no ballpoints / kugelschreiber yet. The Biro was patented in 1938, and only reached the market in 1943.
Just to share a bit about how product names change with the times, this was one of the most popular brands of toothpaste when I was growing up. We know better now…
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Great! However, I’m surprised that for this entry (i. e. “Kuli”) the 1993 dictionary from Wolfgang Pfeiffer is given as the source because my printed copy from 1995 doesn’t contain it. – There is another respected ethymological dictionary, namely the “Kluge”, which also mentions Riepe’s Tintenkuli. But the Kluge has a bit more: The brand name “Tintenkuli” alluded to “Kuli” (English coolie), as the writing instrument was intended to be an inexpensive and reliable servant. It was only later, when the biros came along, that “Kuli” became synonymous with the Kugelschreiber (although the word form does not suggest this). The next time I’ll look it up before I claim something 
I was so sure that it didn’t even occur to me that there could be another explanation.
Thank you for that detail. I think that there are quite a few names which underwent changes for different reasons (I think spontaneously of the pencil Mikado that became Mirado).
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Just crazy… how some things were so easily tolerated in society not all that long ago.
I had a black friend when I was little, and occasionally he’d come over to my place to watch Saturday morning cartoons while we had breakfast. When “All This And Rabbit Stew” came on, he actually thought it was really funny. While I laughed with him, I also felt uneasy about it. Kind of embarrassed for him. And I didn’t quite know why at the time.
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Yes. It also depends on the country, in Venezuela we call black (negro) or my cute little black (mi negrito lindo) and nothing happens, no one thinks it is an insult.
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The early 2000s were a confusing time for rOtring coz of their corporate overlords: Newell Rubbermaid, then Sanford took their sweet time figuring out what to do with this German technical brand… first trying to inject ‘lifestyle’ into the designs, and then borrowing a page from car makers by sharing parts and designs across their portfolio.
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