Colorverse Hayabusa

[jj9ball]

Sometimes accidents happen and they turn in to "happy" little mistakes. I had ordered Colorverse Quasar from the Goulet's. It showed up to my house open and spilled everywhere. They were out of the Quasar and I had to pick another color. A few days later Hayabusa showed up and here we are. I do still have some of the Quasar that was salvaged so it wasn't a complete loss. I feel lucky to now have some of both colors.

On to the review...

 

This ink is expensive. I started off with samples because I just couldn't see coughing up almost 40 bucks ($36) for a 2 oz serving of ink. The most expensive bottle I own is a Montblanc Unicef Blue and I cried for quite a while about that $43. I expected Montblanc to be overpriced and snooty, but not some South Korean Ink with references of space everywhere.

You do get a decent amount of "swag" for the money I suppose. The first couple pictures are the box as it showed up along with everything inside of it. You get a pen stand some stickers of other colors they offer and even a Colorverse napkin. (Kinda reminds me of when I bought my Tormek waterstone sharpener and it came with free bandaids) So they think I will spill much the same as Tormek was sure I would slice my fingers. Fair enough.

The bottles themselves are very attractive in my opinion. You can see for yourself in the pictures below. I didn't try filling from the smaller one, but the larger bottle does have ample room for a 14 or 15mm sectioned pen. So large custom pens and maybe your 149 shouldn't have problems filling from the big bottle. I will personally just empty the little guy into the bigger guy when I start to run low on ink. Total ink you get is about 80ml between the 2 bottles.

 

The ink itself is this beautiful vibrant purple and I personally love it. It doesn't really shade with a normal pen with average flow, but I did notice some shading with a flex pen with much higher flow. You can see both in the pictures below. The ink didn't feather on either copy paper or Rhodia graph and also didn't bleed through on either. I didn't notice any shimmering or sheening, but I was OK with that. I really just liked the tone of the purple. It did dry about average and on wet strokes stayed wet for about 25 to 30 seconds. All in all I really liked the ink and would recommend it, but if you are scared of the price start with a sample. I would love to hear what everyone thinks.

[ENewton]

The swatch makes me think of Waterman Tender Purple, which is much less expensive.

[lapis]

Yes, the Waterman Purple -- my "standard" purple -- looks very similar and is/was always easy to find. Apart from that I'm not hot about getting two bottle sizes together. The possibility to pick between two or three is a better option IYAM.

[BaronWulfraed]

The bottles themselves are very attractive in my opinion. You can see for yourself in the pictures below. I didn't try filling from the smaller one, but the larger bottle does have ample room for a 14 or 15mm sectioned pen. So large custom pens and maybe your 149 shouldn't have problems filling from the big bottle. I will personally just empty the little guy into the bigger guy when I start to run low on ink. Total ink you get is about 80ml between the 2 bottles.

 

Uhm, you did notice that the smaller bottle is a GLISTENING (aka: shimmer) ink? Might not want to add it to the larger bottle.

[jj9ball]

Uhm, you did notice that the smaller bottle is a GLISTENING (aka: shimmer) ink? Might not want to add it to the larger bottle.

Thank you. I didnt even notice. I will add an amendment to the review shortly. And I will NOT combine the bottles together.

[BaronWulfraed]

Look closer at the first image you posted -- top right of the front panel.

Edited September 4, 2019 by BaronWulfraed

[NeverTapOut]

On my screen it looks like Sailor Ultra Marine.

[Honeybadgers]

I continue to hate colorverse's inks. Underwhelming performance, overwhelming price, bad bottle design, the little bottle is flat out pointless, the box is designed so that you have to cut through the label to open it, which kills its use as a method of displaying the ink, and the box is such a monstrously huge nightmare (you could literally stack four bottles of iroshizuku in their box in the space that one colorverse box takes)

 

It's just a shame. I'm a sucker for all their space and science themes. But every single aspect of the 10-15 colors I've tried has been quite unfortunate, and the two boxes I bought I quite regret, even though I found someone willing to trade my little bottle of dark energy for a little bottle of quasar. including a tiny, worthless, impossible to use bottle for no reason is just stupid.

[A Smug Dill]

the box is designed so that you have to cut through the label to open it, which kills its use as a method of displaying the ink,

Having received my orders of three sets, and experienced the issue with the label myself, I just don't understand the concern or grievance. Sure, it required me to have a knife or razor blade handy (but I keep at least one in my desk drawer anyway), but the label can be sliced through neatly with care. I don't see how the cut label, which indicates it's now an opened item — for which you have ownership and that you have used — mars the display aspect, if you're not a shop stocking brand new SKUs "on display".

 

Lots of different types of products, some with very nice retail boxes, come with some sort of round sticker sealing the ends, and must either be cleanly sliced (which I have done hundreds of times) or pulled off but risking damage to the underlying cardboard.

 

My Sailor pens from Japan all come heat-sealed in a plastic sleeve at the factory. I could choose not to cut the sleeve and take the pen out before putting it on display in my pen display box, or I can remove it but lose the ability to prove the pen is brand new and in factory condition. I could imagine that being slightly more of an issue, but with ink being a consumable, and especially when we aren't talking about provably brand new bottles of Parker Penman Sapphire or Lamy Petrol that one could hope to sell for significant profit in response to hobbyist market demand... I just don't get it.