What's the deal with KIN and Rotring?

[stu-dying]

Rotring specialists, I have a burning question deep inside me:
Come on, beyond the obvious example of rapidomatic x vintage rotring 500, in a 1990 Rotring 600 ad, “KOH-I-NOOR” appears under a RR600 FP.

The draft of the ad shows some lettering but it’s just a draft, + my eyesight sucks.

(inside)

I just never understood what’s the deal with this, who came first? Was RR under KIN for a while? Did they partner up to come up with the design? Did RR own KIN? Maybe I’ll send an email to both companies asking them about this.

[Heath]

An old Reddit thread discussing the same thing.

r/mechanicalpencils - Sad but true. r500 and r600 - born in Koh-i-Noor USA....

[stu-dying]

Thank you very much.

[pearsonified]

rOtring bought KIN and continued to use the KIN clips until they were gone.

[drifand]

So strange to see myself mentioned in the thread before I joined Reddit lol… but yes, I’m of the mind that r600 descended from KIN’s long history of hexagonal designs going back to the Select-O-Matic 5617. The two companies had a lot of business dealings after WWII. KIN USA had split from its Czech parent, which had been nationalised. I’ve read comments that rOtring faced brand perception problems and sought partners to distribute their technical pens under different names…

[drifand]

Just made this pic to share on another Reddit thread yesterday…
Besides the relative thickness of the ITC Avant Garde font to discern the Japan-made versus the China-made versions, u/Progstu on Reddit pointed out that only the Japan version has a ‘period’ after the ‘mm’ text.