Okay, mind blown.
Bung Box Sweet Potato Purple. I’ll do a review, I suppose. But part of me thinks that all ink reviews are now superfluous. Let’s pull the plug on all the blogs and forums, and just go home. This probably is the best, most interesting fountain pen ink I’ve ever used. Even though it’s purple. Even though it’s been hyped from here to Japan and back.
Know that I’m not a purple fan. Also, when something has a lot of internet hype, I become super wary. Add in a very high price, and the “it’s only available once every three months” manufacturer-created scarcity, and you are describing an ink pretty much guaranteed to make me roll my eyes so far back in my head I’ll fall over backwards.
Just not for me. In fact, spending more than $40 for a bottle of (purple) Bung Box ink ranks below “root canal” and “sending my ten-year-old daughter on a plane by herself” on the list of Things I’ve Willingly Done.
Except, when I finally reached the bottom of that list, I bought Bung Box Sweet Potato Purple on a whim. And then I actually put the stuff in a pen and wrote with it. And mea culpa. This is a fantastic ink.
It’s divinely odd, and oddly divine. It’s a reddish purple, but it kind of looks burgundy, too, except it’s too purple for that. And it has greenish gold sheen, too.
It’s name is officially Sweet Potato Purple (Omaezaki). I feel like “Omaezaki” should be translated as “dayum.” This ink is that cool, that different, that quirky and wonderful. In fact, if you ever want to convert someone to fountain pen use, put Bung Box Sweet Potato Purple in a pen.
Now, we won’t go nuts or anything. No matter how stunning this ink is, it’s still purple, and it’s still crazy expensive. I have no urge for a “backup bottle.” I am quite certain my one bottle will last me forever. There are, and will continue to be, many other inks that are also awesome, most of which have the advantage of being not-purple. And the further advantage of costing far less than $40 a bottle.
But, still, wow. What an ink.
Oh, I know. “Oy with the poodles already.” Stop with the Sweet Potato Purple.
And I shall. At words poetic I’m so pathetic. It’s just an ink. A silly thing. Like the Tower of Pisa, or the smile of the Mona Lisa, the time of the Derby winner, or a turkey dinner. It’s not like anyone wrote a song about those things that might apply here, too. Just saying.
Montblanc Golden Yellow. Liquid happiness.
This just arrived from Montblanc, brightening up a rainy day.
I love the sunshine orange of the bottled ink, but this ink is not orange: Montblanc Golden Yellow really is a yellow, and a golden yellow at that.
The color reminds me of a glistening egg yolk. It’s deep and warm.
I’ve got mine in a Montblanc 146 with broad nib. The ink seems to have good flow, but it is a yellow ink, so not very dark. I wanted the wider nib.
I am a fan of shading inks, and I love the shading of this ink.
Golden Yellow is not eye-searing or overly bright, and it seems to have a slightly orange tint. But it’s still yellow, so this is probably not the color for writing a note to your boss. But what a happy color.
Golden Yellow looks like it could sheen, perhaps, but rainy weather here makes it impossible for me to know. And I suspect any sheen would be very subtle.
Sailor Jentle Four Seasons Waka-Uguisu. This is a yellow-green ink that I thought I’d hate, but instead love. Waka-Uguisu has nice shading, nice behavior and a color that turns out to be beautiful, instead of bilious. And it looks great in an extra-fine nib.
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It does look like an Easter basket just threw up on me, doesn’t it?
But thankfully not. It’s just that I just got three more of the new Sailor Four Seasons inks. Up there are Sailor Waka-Uguisu, Sakura-Mori and Yuki-Akari.
Candidly, I am not a pastel person. But I have been happily surprised by these three inks. In fact the final ink of the trio, the one I only grudgingly added to the shopping cart, because I absolutely loathed the color of the online swabs, turns out to be my favorite of all. Go figure.
But first things first. Here is a comparison of Sakura-Mori, the new Sailor pink, with the old Sailor pink, Peche.
That’s perhaps sad news for Peche devotees. Sakura-Mori is a warmer color, and isn’t really very much like Peche.
But Sakura-Mori is lovely, nonetheless, if you like pale pink inks. It’s a delicate pink with a blush of orange, I believe. Now, a light pink ink is not be the most versatile, useful color, for sure, but I have a soft spot for the barely legible ink category, so I like this one.
Sailor Jentle Four Seasons Irori. The last of my three “coming very soon” Sailor inks is Irori, which is a bright and cheery “fun red” that won’t give you me flashbacks to bad grades. Irori doesn’t have much shading, but it’s a red ink that really brings it in an ultra-fine nib.
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Fountain Pen Follies 