Originally published at: Fun facts about the BIC ballpoint pen (video) - Boing Boing
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My favorite pen is the Majohn A1 fountain pen. It’s a knock-off of the Pilot Vanishing Point pen, which I might like even better if I weren’t too cheap to spend more than twice as much money than I spent on the A1.
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The video didn’t even mention the most important use of the BIC pen: rewinding your cassette tapes by putting the pen barrel into the six-pronged tape reel hub hole and spinning it.
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They’re also quite nice to draw with, the ink dries just slow enough to allow some nice expression and they’re quite responsive to changes in hand pressure as well.
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Almost need a compendium of “uses of a bic pen unrelated to being used as a pen” [wink], one of the more infamous was the early (?) tubular locks (e.g. kryptonite) were easily ‘picked’ by cramming the barrel down it. (uh… theres always a video)
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After reading about Lou Ottens, I suspect that he designed the reels to fit the Bic pen.
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Came here for this.
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I don’t have a Bic Crystal in my office, but I do have one of these mentioned towards the end of the video.
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I will always, always choose a Rollerball over anything else. Bic pens can fail as well. Ever since I discovered Rollerballs I’ve used them whenever I write. Having to push down while writing is so primitive - sorry Bic.
(The bic pen is truly iconic though - you don’t see it as much these days, or the four-color either, but they were truly ubiquitous in my school days.)
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The “Gunner” pen! Famed when i was in med school as the pen for those who color code their notes or otherwise exhibited weird behavior.
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The ladies get so emotional when they write, after all, right bro? 
Bro don’t leave me hanging bro.
(Can’t spell “misogyny” without /s)
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One thing about this old bic pen design–take the plastic cap out and blow in the end. The side vent hole whistles with a high frequency. Annoyed my teacher to no end!
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Just so they could charge more money, I’m sure! 
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And a little heart over the “i”.
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That the smell of the ink is similar enough to ant trail pheromones that you can get ants to follow any pen line you want has always been my personal favorite bic pen fact.
disclaimer: it’s been ~15 years since I’ve tried it, so can’t guarantee it still works
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When we were allowed a single cheat-sheet at university, a classmate would write in blue ink, then over-write more notes in red ink. He’d read the cheat-sheet through squares of blue or red cellophane. Blue cellophane to read the red notes, etc.
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The Pink Tax strikes again.
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It didn’t answer my question, which is why the bit near the tip that holds the metal parts is that weird gold-brown color instead of, well, any other possible color. That only seems to be the case for the Cristal.
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