Sticking to the Lamy theme from the recent blog post about blue Lamy Safari fountain pens from the 1990s and now we’ve got another Lamy blog post today: Their special edition pens you normally don’t see in the West: the Pirates of the Caribbean (Dead Men Tell no Tales) and the Star Wars pens.
Lamy’s Special Editions
Lady’s special editions follow a similar recipe: Take Lamy’s Line Friends Safari, for example. It’s a Safari with a different colour and a clip attachment. The colour of the special editions isn’t always different and the main difference of these special editions to their ‘normal’ counterparts is the clip attachment. They also often have extras (converter, special packaging) and a higher price.
I’ve shown a few different Lamy shops in Shanghai. Here’s one I haven’t shown yet: The one in the Jing An Kerry Centre [1]Fun fact: many years ago Jing An was the only place in Shanghai with a Burger King, but now Burger King is ubiquitous..
Pirates of the Caribbean
The Pirates of the Carribean themed pen looks like a Safari in the current Petrol colour with clip attachement in the shape of a jolly roger skull. You also get a converter and a leather roll as part of your set.
Star Wars
The Star Wars themed pens are Lamy joy [2]Lamy spells joy lower-case so I’ll stick to that in this this blog post fountain pens. If you are not familiar with the joy: the front section is the same as the Safari’s, but the main body is much longer. It is kind of a desk only version of the Safari. Desk only because the long body makes it unsuitable for easy transport [3]You can see one in this Bleistift blog post from 2011..
The Star Wars joys have ‘normal’ nibs. I mention this because the joy is also available as a calligraphy set with italic nibs of different widths.
The black joy comes with a Vader clip attachment. The white joy comes with a Stormtrooper themed clip attachment.
The price is only slightly higher than the price of a normal Lamy joy in Shanghai: A normal joy is ¥380 (~$56; £44; €50). The Star Wars set is ¥418 [4]This number sounds good in Chinese, a bit like ‘will be fortunate, for sure’. (~$$62; £48; €55). It comes with a converter.
You pay more, you get more
The price of the Lamy pens in Shanghai is a bit higher than in the West, but you also get more. The pens I’ve seen in Shanghai often come in nice boxes I haven’t seen in Europe. They also often seem to include converters that would be charged extra in the West.
The special edition pens are only slightly more expensive than the normal editions [5]Exactly 10% in the case of the Star Wars joy..
Not in the West
I assume the reason why you normally don’t see these special editions in the West has more to do with licensing than with demand, especially since they are not much more expensive than the normal versions of these pens, so they should sell well anywhere – but that’s just a guess.
As I know most of the readers of my blog I might as well write this publicly: If you want one of these pens let me know and I’ll try to get one for you.
Prices and exchange rates: June 2017
If you want to know more about Shanghai’s Lamy stores have a look at this blog post about the store in Raffles City, the stores in this comment or the one in this blog post.
References
| ↑1 | Fun fact: many years ago Jing An was the only place in Shanghai with a Burger King, but now Burger King is ubiquitous. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Lamy spells joy lower-case so I’ll stick to that in this this blog post |
| ↑3 | You can see one in this Bleistift blog post from 2011. |
| ↑4 | This number sounds good in Chinese, a bit like ‘will be fortunate, for sure’. |
| ↑5 | Exactly 10% in the case of the Star Wars joy. |
I was ragging on Cross for doing a poor job on their licensed pens for Star Wars but Lamy jut proved its possible to do a worse job. I am hoping that Disney realizes this and hands the licensing rights over to Montegrappa who has actually shown some integrity with Game of Thrones.
Thank you for your comment.
I’ve seen those Game of Thrones pens briefly on the web and they looked really well designed for their theme.
I guess Disney doesn’t care as long as the money is right and the pens aren’t awful 8^(
Lamy is used to making large numbers of the same pen, I guess they don’t have the expertise to set something up for a specially themed pencil, so adding a clip attachment is their easy way out. Maybe they know this is suboptimal and don’t even tell the more critical customers in other countries about these pens because of that (just to add another speculation why these aren’t available in the USA and Europe).
I’m interested in the black star wars. Please let me know of terms by email. I was referred by Tom Oddo.
Unfortunately I can’t help. I’m back in Europe and not in Shanghai anymore.