There’s a shared obsession with unique writing instruments here at The Gadgeteer, so it’s sort of a big deal if I can beat my fellow Gadgeteers to posting about a new and different gadgety pen. Turtle, a new company based out of the UK, has just released their first two contributions to the world of unique pens, the Turtle Work and Turtle Play.
Both pens feature Turtle’s patent-pending SNAPback mechanism, which pulls the entire nub of the pen (or in Turtle’s parlance, the “turtle head”) back into the stainless-steel body simply by pulling the two sections of the body apart. This same action snaps the nub back into position for writing.
The Turtle Work features professional-looking all-stainless-steel body and your choice of black or white accents, while the Turtle Play adds a rubberized grip and substitutes accents in green or orange. These pens run roughly $47-$54 depending on the model, and include a storage canister and one of their proprietary ballpoint refills.
I’ll be honest, no matter how cool or unique it is, I don’t know how I feel about dropping $50 on a pen that requires special refills that you can only get from a company that has been around for less than a year. But maybe that’s just me.
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I did after reading your first post. It writes smooth but it wasnt worth the money. It doesnt work quite as easy as i thought.
I am a pen nut and in my opinion, they are just very expensive ball point pens with a non-interchangeable refill. When the company goes out out business, you may as well throw out the pen.
Not for me.
Not A fountain pen so I am not interested at all. 😉
The pictures of the refills on their website looks like a standard refill that you can pick up at Staples.
Jackie’s right, theses refills look like the Parker brand refills
Cool pen. Standard refills; Parker or EasyFlow gel/ ballpoint will work, no need to worry about proprietary refills.
confirmed…
I emailed Turtle, and i got a prompt reply from Richard Allen:
“You are correct that the parker refills are the same size as our refills. We use high quality german made refills in our pens. The only change to the standard size of refill is that we put two breathing holes in the top – you will be able to see what I mean with the refill you get in the pen. Not that I want to lose your business!”