Mini Review: Another Look at the Platinum Preppy

Eye-numbingly brilliant

I’ve been wanting to do a follow-up on the Platinum Preppy for a while now. Was my initial review too harsh? I don’t know about that—it accurately reflected my feelings at the time. But now I have a few more feelings.

This is the worst plastic, against which all other plastics are compared.

I still stand by that sentiment: this is unforgivably terrible plastic. It cracks, even when living a gentle, docile life in a pen case. Even with the tape, the cap doesn’t stay on. The pen then dries out, and becomes completely useless. The fact that people will use this pen as an eyedropper strikes concern into my heart every day, and each night I go to bed wondering who among our kind has had the rage of shoddy plastic turn against them, leaving ink everywhere.

Maybe the pen did better this time around because I couldn't clean out all the dried ink?

For whatever reason, I did not have the writing problems I had before. No fuzzing or feathering. No atrocious bleedthrough on everything I wrote. I would like to recant my previous assessment of the fineness of nib: just as it is a fine nib in this writing sample, it was a fine nib before; I don’t know what my previous problem was on that front. The yellow was a tad scratchy on non-Clairefontaine paper, but this is still just a $3.30 refillable fountain pen, so I’m not expecting miracles.

Since the Sailor Ink Bar has left this world, I am forced to acknowledge the inferior Platinum Preppy as heir to the low-cost throne

It’s a decent, cheap, absolute entry-level starter fountain pen that is, most importantly, refillable (though only with special Platinum cartridges). I’m not nutso about this pen, and please know that I worry about you if you’re using one of these as an eyedropper, but I’ve come around to more enthusiastically admit that this pen is pretty alright.

Platinum Preppy Fountain Pens at JetPens

Platinum Preppy Fountain Pen – Fine 03 Nib – Purple Ink and Green Ink

I'm not quite satisfied with how the colors came out on this scan, and no amount of Photoshopping has changed this. I'll throw in a link to a really crappy picture of the review, and hopefully, going forward, I can work out something to give us a little more color fidelity here. Like, say, a new scanner. That would help.

Here’s my attempt at taking a picture of the review. This is not better than the scan; it’s just bad in all new ways. But enough with my shoddy techniques; let’s review this pen.

This pen. These pens.

Continuing in my established tradition of reviewing really cheap pens, I bring you the Platinum Preppy Fountain Pen (the purple one is mine, the green one is on loan from my friend and coworker, Betsy). This was one of the earliest fountain pens I bought, back when I was trying to figure out what all the fuss was over these fusty old devices.

The color-matched nibs are a cute touch.

I wanted a nice purple pen (which I eventually got); the color that came out of this pen, once we finally got it to work, was more of what I’d call a Fandango (a color name I have only just now learned; thanks Wikipedia). The pen was rather reluctant to write right out of the Jiffylite packaging, and I can’t recall what esoteric rituals we performed to get it to function. If you’ve ordered one of these pens and it seems dead in the water, uh, keep trying? Maybe you, too, will accidentally stumble on the solution.

Spring-loaded, the better to make irritating noises when you idly twist the cap around

The pen body itself is made of a hard plastic that is more than willing to crack–I currently have two cracks in the cap of my purple pen. At some point, they’ll surely expand enough to make the cap completely inoperable. The clip on the pen seems to be the same sort of crack-prone plastic as the rest of the pen–the sort of thing that wouldn’t hesitate to snap off if you tried to use it for anything other than keeping the pen from rolling away. There is an interesting spring mechanism in the cap, which helps to seal the nib in when closed–there’s an inner cap on the end of the spring, which the grip of the pen then pushes into. It keeps the nib safe and free from drying out. Aside from those initial starting troubles, I’ve never had this pen choke out on me. Even after months of sitting unused, this pen writes; what more can you ask for at this price point?

I would ask for an actual fine nib, is what I'd ask for.

Maybe I got a bad pen, or maybe my early attempts at fountain pen writing were nothing but heavy-handed abuse, but this is not what I’d call a fine nib. This is medium. I can’t imagine how thick the so-called “medium” Preppy nib must be. The colors are enjoyable, but everything else about this ink is terrible. It bleeds through the page, lays down thick and wet, fuzzes and feathers, isn’t waterproof–in fact, it’s probably more water than ink (again, what was I expecting at this price point?).

But you know what? It writes. And in all the time I’ve had it, I’ve been able to count on it for that. What this pen is, is it’s a good, cheap, reliable, beginner’s fountain pen. So what if the ink is capable only of either pooling up (very left unfriendly) or soaking through the paper? It’s an easy writer, and still writes even when held at awkward and nonsensical angles (which, by the way, is the only way non-fountain-pen users know how to hold fountain pens) . And it’s cheap. That’s what’s important about this pen–it writes and it’s cheap.

Have something beautiful, for the road

Platinum Preppy Fountain Pen – Fine 03 Nib – Green Ink at JetPens

Platinum Preppy Fountain Pen – Fine 03 Nib – Purple Ink at JetPens