Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Review: Pentel Rolly 4 Color Pen and R.S.V.P. RT Retractable PLUS GIVEAWAY

I'll admit, when I saw these ball point pens in the Big Box O' Pen Love, I was a little disappointed. I believe my exact thought was, "Aww man, ball points."

I'm not much of a fan.

I used to be! I used to love ball point pens when they were the only game in town. Stick pens, as my Gramma used to call them, were magic to me. Don't even get me started on how happy I was when I first got my hands on a retractable pen. I felt very grown up, clicking the little button on my pen to make the tip come out. I'm sure I annoyed my teachers to no end with my endless clicking.



Back to the pens at hand. I'll start with the R.S.V.P. RT, the retractable R.S.V.P.

When I saw these pens, I really thought the retractable was a good "upgrade" for the R.S.V.P. Part of the reason I didn't much care for writing with the original capped R.S.V.P. was that the cap made the pen feel bulky in my hand and I always had to leave the cap off (and sometimes lost it).

The RTs have the nice rubber grip and good feel of their stick pen cousins, but unfortunately they also share the globby ink and skippy ink flow as well. It took me a few tries to get the red pen to write, and the blue never really filled in the way I like my pens to.

I was pretty disappointed with these pens. Even though they are 59% recycled plastic (and part of the Recycology Line of Pentel Pens), and I LOVE that, I just didn't like them. I would keep these guys on my desk as an offering to the Pen Stealing Gods, and my good pens in my desk drawer.


Next up, the Roly 4 Color Pen.

When I was a kid, I always wanted one of these pens. I remember trying to think up a reason why I had to have one, because these pens usually came one to a package and we usually bought a package of stick pens that came 10 to a bag. My Mom used one for work, and I would stare at it whenever she would bring it out at home to jot something down. This pen brought back a lot of those memories, and it didn't disappoint.



The Roly is a really sleek looking pen right out of the gate. I received the transparent accent colored barrel version (it comes in Black, Blue, Light Green and Pink). The really awesome thing about this pen (besides the fact that it's a four color pen) is that you can refill each of the colors independently. The latex free grip is consistent with the quality Pentel puts into all of the grips on their pens.

I enjoyed the 0.7mm tip - it wrote in nice, crisp lines with nicely flowing ink. No stops and starts here. The colored inks all popped on the page, and the black was nice and dark. It was very comfortable to write with, even with extended writing.

I would recommend the Roly 4 Color to anyone who is looking for a multi-color pen for color coding tasks (or if you just like to have a cool pen that writes in four colors).

I want to pass on the Roly love, and I'll give it away to one lucky commenter! Leave a comment below and tell me why you'd love a four color pen by Saturday, May 15th at midnight and on Sunday morning I'll randomly choose someone to receive this awesome pen.

6 comments:

  1. I love how pens can evoke such memories. i really feel you on that point. I , too, especially coveted a four color pen when I was little. It seemed all the coolest people had one, and alas, I was not one of them.

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  2. Anonymous3:34 AM

    I'd love to have a 4 color pen. There are some kinds of charting that I need to do with red pen, and I end up holding both a red and black pen in my hand, which is tricky, but entertaining to anyone watching me. I've been using the TUL black gels, which I LOVE, but the TUL red tip is too thick and I can't write nice and tiny. I prefer 0.7 mm tips, and I love that it's refillable.

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  3. I still to this day get a stern look from co-workers and family for clicking my RT's. The only thing they dread worse is when I have my multi-color retractable. It's music to my ears that almost keeps a rhythm with my protracting and retracting as I spin the pen around in my fingers. The Roly line is not something I can find at my local art store. I would love to give this one a try!

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  4. A multi-pen would be awesome to have for drawing and making art. I used to sketch with ballpoints all the time, and this little ditty could help me get back in the swing of it.

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  5. I would love a Roly pen. I study lots of anatomy for med school, and being able to switch colors easily would be amazing, and so much easier than putting one pen down, uncapping another, recapping, picking up another pen, lol, you get the idea. I would love to give it a try, and maybe convince myself to go and splurge a bit buying some more multi-pens.

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  6. I haven't used a multicolor pen in a long time, since I was a little kid. I'd love to get my adult hand on this one!

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