Reynolds Pen Company

[Shangas]

Hey everyone!!

 

Me again *FPN lets out a collective groan*

 

I was having a discussion with a friend last night about the film classic "The Godfather". We were chatting about our favourite parts of the movie and all the famous quotes in the movie, when I was reminded of a scene where Kay Adams and Michael Corleone are walking through a Christmas-time Manhattan with snow everywhere. Kay and Mikey are discussing Christmas presents, and Kay says that she bought Tom (Tom Hagen) "The Reynolds pen..."

 

So did, or does...a Reynolds Pen Company...really exist? I think I read somewhere that it did. The Godfather was set in 1945-1955. What sort of pens was that company making in that time-period?

[Samovar]

I guess they still exist, they even make fountain pen

I saw some reynolds pen in France

 

http://reynolds-india.com/reynolds/products/Ink+Pen#anchor

 

 

http://www.billspens.com/billspens/reynolds/reynolds.htm

Edited August 22, 2007 by Samovar

[Jeff L]

The current Reynolds company, which has its origins in France, is not related to the famous/infamous company by Milton Reynolds, promoter extraordinarie. There are multiple articles on the history of Reynolds in old Pen Worlds which are available from the PCA library and elsewhere.

 

The Reynolds pen wasn't the first ballpoint, but it was the first to gain significant success in sales, astonishing success in fact, at least for a while. It is perhaps superseded in people's mind by the Reynolds Rocket which is the pen that followed.

 

The success of these pens forced many pen companies (with the notable exception of Parker) to come out with competing products, in some case before they were ready. The phenomenal success of the Reynolds pens are generally attributed within pen collector lore as contributing to the downfall of Wahl and ushering in the age of ballpoints.

 

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~jeffl/pix/reynolds_rocket_1947.jpg

[kissing]

A friend of mine has a stash of Reynold International size cartridges, so I'm sure some modern fountain pens must have been made by this company. Otherwise, their disposable Bic-like ballpoints are fairly common.

 

Heck, when I visited Sanford Head Office in Keysborough, I was shocked to find that the pen cup of the Office lady had nothing but Reynold ballpoints in it! What has become of Sanford? Their employees don't even use their own company pens

[RLTodd]

Bill Acker pretty much sums it up here:

 

http://www.photoethnography.com/ClassicCam....html~mainFrame

 

I think Milton Reynolds profitable fiasco was all over by 1950. Anything else, that is not one of these Brio patent infringement ball points and has the name Reynolds on it is most assuredly the product of some other company.

[superfly]

I have a pair of Reynolds cartridges, Red and Blue. The blue one is interesting color, kinda like Watermans South Seas blue, very vibrant...

 

Nenad

[EventHorizon]

Pretty racy add for the 40-50's. No elegance for sale here!!!!!

[Akumar]

I do not know whey people do not know about Reynolds. It seems strange. In India they have the majority of market share. they make awesome ball point pens and so cheap too say 1/8 of a dollar. Their fountain pens are awesome too. A 6 dollar fountain pen with two tone nib and gold plated embellishments looks like a 100 dollar pen. It does not write so well maybe but it looks awesome in one's hand . Many people have commented on my own Reynolds pen and asked the cost and when I told them it was 100 USD they seemed to believe it.

[speerbob]

When I lived in Thailand I would see Reynolds ballpoint everywhere. The fountain pens were less common but I would find old store stock of them sometimes. The fountain pens are cheap pens but really they just sell them as student pens anyway. Usually colorful plastic cartridge pens with stiff steel nibs. I had brought some back, but sold all of them already. cheers, BOB

[RLTodd]

  RLTodd said:

Bill Acker pretty much sums it up here:

 

http://www.photoethnography.com/ClassicCam....html~mainFrame

 

I think Milton Reynolds profitable fiasco was all over by 1950. Anything else, that is not one of these Brio patent infringement ball points and has the name Reynolds on it is most assuredly the product of some other company.

 

 

12/23/2008 update. Ignore the link, it now points to something else.

 

Another example of the advantages of the local library over the WWW......

 

 

[jay23]

  kissing said:

A friend of mine has a stash of Reynold International size cartridges, so I'm sure some modern fountain pens must have been made by this company. Otherwise, their disposable Bic-like ballpoints are fairly common.

 

Heck, when I visited Sanford Head Office in Keysborough, I was shocked to find that the pen cup of the Office lady had nothing but Reynold ballpoints in it! What has become of Sanford? Their employees don't even use their own company pens

 

Yes they do make modern fountain pens, I have one.

[ANM]

I am pretty sure the Reynolds pen in the movie was the Milton Reynolds pen, not related to the Reynolds pen being made today. There was a thread about this pen before Shangas. I think you posted a question or comment at that time.

 

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa101697.htm

 

Biro was working with Eberhard and Eversharp to develop the ball point when in June, 1945: Less than a month after Eversharp/Eberhard close the deal with Eterpen, Chicago businessman, Milton Reynolds visits Buenos Aires. While in a store, he sees the Biro pen and recognizes the pen’s sales potential. He buys a few pens as samples. Reynolds returns to America and starts the Reynolds International Pen Company, ignoring Eversharp’s patent rights.

 

October 29, 1945: Reynolds copies the product in four months and sells his product Reynold's Rocket at Gimbel’s department store in New York City. Reynolds’ imitation beats Eversharp to market. Reynolds’ pen is immediately successful: Priced at $12.50, $100,000 worth sold the first day on the market.

 

From the same source, The rest of the story.

 

he Ballpoint Pen Becomes a Fad

Ballpoint pens guaranteed to write for two years without refilling, claimed to be smear proof. Reynolds advertised it as the pen "to write under water." Eversharp sued Reynolds for copying the design it had acquired legally. The previous 1888 patent by John Loud would have invalidated everyone's claims. However, no one knew that at the time. Sales skyrocketed for both competitors. Nevertheless, the Reynolds’ pen leaked, skipped and often failed to write. Eversharp’s pen did not live up to its own advertisements. A very high volume of pen returns occurred for both Eversharp and Reynolds. The ballpoint pen fad ended - due to consumer unhappiness.

 

1948: Frequent price wars, poor quality products, and heavy advertising costs hurt each side. Sales did a nosedive. The original asking price of $12.50 dropped to less than 50 cents per pen.

1950: The French Baron called Bich, drops the h and starts BIC and starts selling pens.

1951: The ballpoint pen dies a consumer death. Fountain pens are number one again. Reynolds folds.

January, 1954: Parker Pens introduces its first ballpoint pen, the Jotter. The Jotter wrote five times longer than the Eversharp or Reynolds pens. It had a variety of point sizes, a rotating cartridge and large-capacity ink refills. Best of all, it worked. Parker sold 3.5 million Jotters @ $2.95 to $8.75 in less then one year.

The Ballpoint Pen Battle is Won

1957: Parker introduces the tungsten carbide textured ball bearing in their ballpoint pens. Eversharp was in deep financial trouble and tried to switch back to selling fountain pens. Eversharp sold its pen division to Parker Pens and Eversharp's assets finally liquidated in the 1960’s.

 

Edited December 24, 2008 by ANM

[jay23]

  Akumar said:

I do not know whey people do not know about Reynolds. It seems strange. In India they have the majority of market share. they make awesome ball point pens and so cheap too say 1/8 of a dollar. Their fountain pens are awesome too. A 6 dollar fountain pen with two tone nib and gold plated embellishments looks like a 100 dollar pen. It does not write so well maybe but it looks awesome in one's hand . Many people have commented on my own Reynolds pen and asked the cost and when I told them it was 100 USD they seemed to believe it.

 

First off that is because they have most of the market share in India, most people here are from many other countries. Secondly most of us here wouldn't care how good it looks in one's hand if it doesn't write worth a damn.

[dedalian]

  jay23 said:

  Akumar said:

I do not know whey people do not know about Reynolds. It seems strange. In India they have the majority of market share. they make awesome ball point pens and so cheap too say 1/8 of a dollar. Their fountain pens are awesome too. A 6 dollar fountain pen with two tone nib and gold plated embellishments looks like a 100 dollar pen. It does not write so well maybe but it looks awesome in one's hand . Many people have commented on my own Reynolds pen and asked the cost and when I told them it was 100 USD they seemed to believe it.

 

First off that is because they have most of the market share in India, most people here are from many other countries. Secondly most of us here wouldn't care how good it looks in one's hand if it doesn't write worth a damn.

 

 

I just bought a new reynolds fp. It cost abt 30$ so isnt really all that cheap but not so expensive either considering my previous buy was a waterman carene deluxe!

It looks good if a bit flashy actually Id say to the point of being as fake a bling product as something around the neck of a wannabe gangsta rapper trying to get his first video out . It actually writes quite well (so far). It has a nib that says Haolilai (Im guessing chinese)- a bit bendy but writes decently. It is a bit "wet" which makes it seem smoother than it is. It might almost be a worthy pen if i didnt start to have problems with it from day one- basically the cap has gotten loooooose! I expect it to fall out of the cap anytime. Im thinking this is just a fancy packaging job of a cheap chinese product. so dont buy. (should have got the rotring)

[georges zaslavsky]

Reynolds was highly popular in the 80's-90's in France, they made decent writers for the money. I have seen Reynolds French made pens not the Indian made ones which are still built in the spirit of their predecessors.

[draustin]

Apparently Reynolds still exists in India. Their website does not show any fountain pen. I happen to have one, received as a gift from an Indian colleague, I'm posting some pics of it. Came with a cartridge adaptor.

Dr. Austin

[shrujaya]

Hi all...

 

This Reynolds FP thing has me intrigued...and I still dont have answers...I had put up a post some time back on the Reynolds FPs that I bought...

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...mp;hl=ministere

 

 

The people in the showroom in Hyderabad always tell me that this is an imported pen... and the showroom also stocks Rotring FPs, which are imported pens... Do the Reynolds FPs and Rotring FPs come from the same place...? There is a French Reynolds site which is still under construction

www.reynolds.fr but i dont know whether it is the FP related Reynolds or not...

 

The pens that I have are good writers...I have also gifted these pens to a couple of my friends...they said they enjoyed writing with the pen... check out the post link for pics of the pen...

 

Regards,

 

Shrujaya

 

 

[ramshacklemann]

  draustin said:

Apparently Reynolds still exists in India. Their website does not show any fountain pen. I happen to have one, received as a gift from an Indian colleague, I'm posting some pics of it. Came with a cartridge adaptor.

Dr. Austin

 

Your reynolds pen has a nib and feed that remind me of my parker sonnet..the engraving pattern on the nib and the shape of the feed are very similar, just sayin..

 

[draustin]

  ramshacklemann said:

  draustin said:

Apparently Reynolds still exists in India. Their website does not show any fountain pen. I happen to have one, received as a gift from an Indian colleague, I'm posting some pics of it. Came with a cartridge adaptor.

Dr. Austin

 

Your reynolds pen has a nib and feed that remind me of my parker sonnet..the engraving pattern on the nib and the shape of the feed are very similar, just sayin..

 

The nib is made by a chinese pen company called Haolilai (still active). You can search FPN (this site) for some nice Haolilai pens. The nib is marked Haolilai 22KPG. Interestingly enough, Reynolds and Rotring were absorbed in the same company: Sanford Corp., a division of Newell Rubbermaid, that also owns today Parker, PaperMate, Waterman, Sharpie and Sensa. I wonder with so many nib producers within the company, why use a chinese nib? Strange...

Dr. Austin

[Anne-Sophie]

Below is the link of fountain pens made for Reynolds. This is the website of Reynolds distributors in India.

 

Grippy ink pen

http://reynolds-india.com/reynolds/products/Ink+Pen#anchor

 

Ink Pen

http://reynolds-india.com/reynolds/product.../Ink+pen#anchor

 

The first pen looks like a plastic knockoff of the Waterman Audace.

 

The second seems to be a piston filler, Hari saw the Ink Pen in person (it is an Eye Dropper)

 

 

The French website is not working, it might have been setup right before Reynolds was bought by Sanford which in turn was bought by Rubbermaid.

 

 

Being French born, many products and the logo look very familiar to me.

 

The pencil eraser, the wood pencils and their cheapest ball point has not changed at all.

I had all 3 and hated the ball point almost as much as Bic if not more.

 

I used Reynolds fountain pen ink erasers but I do not recall seeing beautiful fountain pens.

Distribution of those might have been limited to Paris or other bigger metropolitan areas such as Strasbourg, Toulouse and Lyon. who knows?

 

 

Newell Rubbermaid might use Reynolds for their school pens market competing with Lamy, Pelikan and Stypen in that market worldwide.

Unless they see a significant market for those, I do not know if the U.S is going to be included.

 

After reading Hari's and Jai's post it seems that Reynolds is going for the whole range of fountain pens.

 

But we still don't see any in the U.S.

Edited March 20, 2009 by Anne-Sophie