Pepsi Fountain Pen

Since it is a Holiday Weekend here in the US, I thought I would work on a fun looking pen.

Pepsi was invented in New Bern, North Carolina in 1893, and named Pepsi Cola in 1898. I am not much of a Pepsi drinker, but devotees will tell you there is a large difference to Coca Cola. I suspect the Coke devotees would say the same. In 1934 the Company began selling 12 ounce bottles of Pepsi for 5 cents, while their competitors were charging the same for 6 ounce bottles. This became a marketing thrust for several years and their sales campaigns and jingles stressed this difference.

Here is a post card that I have from that time period which again emphasizes the 5 cent value ~  (Edit:  Please see comment below and reference to the following website Pepsi and Pete, which mentions that the characters in the Postcard are Pepsi and Pete, developed and drawn by Rube Goldberg.   Mr. Goldberg was referred to in the title and contents of my post of December 21, 2007 ~ Rube Goldberg Ink Delivery Machine.  Thank you Eric for the information and links.)

During this time a Pepsi Fountain Pen was manufactured.  I do not know who made this pen ~ a few people have speculated it is an Eagle Pen product, but I have no direct evidence of this.  You can see that the logo on the pen and advertisement are the same, placing the pen in this same late 1930s period, I would speculate.

Below, you can see the exploded view of the lever filler.  The size 16 nib has hardened, but had not crumbled.  Two things stand out.  The clip is a Pepsi bottle that has tarnished.  I have seen pristine examples of these where the clip is actually a painted replica of the red, white and blue bottle.  This clip has no trace of the colors or logo at all.  Secondly, you can see that the nib is gold plate with the typical loss of gold towards the base.

The barrel, cap band, threads, and clip all needed work and intensive cleaning (I hate white pens).  The j-bar was brittle and needed to be replaced, as did the sac.

I spent quite a bit of time cleaning the pen barrel with a cloth and pen polish from Pentiques.  I cleaned the threads with Ink-X and a toothbrush.  As for the clip and cap band ~ they were cleaned with metal cleaner and a lot of dremel work. The section was scraped, removing any old sac remnants and a new sac was attached using sac cement.  The feed was cleaned and the nib just gently cleaned with a jewelers cloth.

Here you can see the finished product.  The gold band and clip look great.  As mentioned above, there is no trace of the original clip artwork which I would prefer to have had, but it certainly looks much better than when I found it (dark black).  If you can find one of these with the clip bottle artwork in good condition ~ I envy you.

The barrel and threads are also quite clean, though there has been a bit of yellowing over the years that I can not reverse.  The pen measures 4 7/8 inches capped and 6 3/16 posted.

Here is the Signature Pen No. 6 nib, which is in very good shape, aside from the wear to the gold plate.

A close up of the unique clip.

And finally, a little Photoshop fun…..