Pen Review: Color Technik Glitter 80 pack

This looked like another fun set to try. 80 individual colors, and refills were available sold separately at the time. It was like upgrading from the Crayola 8 colors to the infamous 64 colors, back in the day. I don’t see where one can purchase these pens (or refills) anymore, but I’m going to review them anyway. The first thing I did was take them all out and organize them by apparent color. I can’t stand it when they put them in all randomly. I want to see blues together, greens, purples, and so on. Who wants to hunt through the entire pack looking at brown next to yellow next to hot pink, silver, another shade of yellow . . . It was an impressive spread in four foldable panels. I am given to wonder if this was representative of the “average” glitter pen out there. Reviews, prices, and appearances seemed very similar to other larger sets available. The colors were pretty, when they worked. I don’t know the expected shelf-life of an average gel pen, or if glitter pens don’t last as long. I guess I’ve been spoiled with pens in general, so these disappointed me a bit. I was able to get a sample of each ink when I opened it (which I tucked in my book) but some of those pens never worked again. Ink got stuck or bubbled back into the top of the tube, and could not be coaxed back out. Maybe I do not know the best way to pen-whisper stubborn inks out, but I would also think that so many should have issues with rare use after 2-6 months shelf life. Had I used them constantly, they might have lasted 4 months based on the amount the ink went down after use. But if some start to dry out after 2 . . . It wasn’t that the entire set died, or all at once. But what is the point of having such a breath-taking array of colors to choose from when . . . you can’t really choose from all of them? I think the problem is a pen wouldn’t die all at once. It would sputter long enough to give one hope and be annoying. Sputter, skip, start and sputter again . . .Then 8 minutes and 5 pens later, you finally find one that works sufficiently. You didn’t get to use your first pick, or your second . . . So for me it somewhat of defeated the purpose of having all that variety to pick your ideal color. In retrospect I should have started the pen hospital/infirmary sooner. Those pens that skip annoyingly but don’t seem quite out of hope, so I’d put them back, only to be disappointed another day. This is when the Color-It pens started to look much better. And I have yet to see any other organizational system with that many colors that labels the barrels for consistent refills. (What you put in the pen IS the same color, not an iffy refill that you’re not sure about, ends up being slightly off, and you keep reaching for the wrong pen barrel color out of habit). On a good note, at least I got a ton of pen casings (housings? what does one call them?) Similar to Color-It, the pens seem to fit a variety of other gel color refills out there. If tempted to try other refills (cheaper than the pens, and less waste) at least I have a huge resource of pens to put them in. Color-It and Color Technik were the two main larger pen sets I got. I don’t have that much money to spend on multiple sets that run $10-40 dollars each. That adds up. I based my purchase on skimming reviews and overall ratings, and enlarging photos of the pen selection to ensure there were enough I would actually want to use (no point getting a set of 50 when you only really want to use 12). Based on the prices and reviews of a lot of the glitter pen packages out there, I didn’t think I’d strike magic anywhere else.