Mickey Mouse Fountain Pens

This week’s pen comes from a trade with a fellow collector. A while back, I wrote about a Popeye Pen (November 2010), another cartoon character that was popular in the early to mid 1900s.

Below, you can see the pen after I took it apart.  The pressure bar is still in good condition and usable, so I left it in the barrel.  As you can see, the sac had hardened and broke apart as I emptied and cleaned out the barrel.  The section and feed are in good shape, but you can see that most of the gold plate on the nib has faded away.

Cleaning the exterior of these decorated pens is not as easy as a vintage Duofold, as one has to weave around the gold plated clips, levers, and artwork.  I was able to clean out most of the grime and scratches from the black plastic without damaging Mickey, Minnie, or any of the gold plate.  The only casualty was the nib and its washed gold.   Not in the greatest condition, and a relatively cheap nib to begin with, I decided to polish the nib, cleaning out as many of the marks as possible, thereby removing any of the remaining gold plate.  After cleaning, I replaced the nib and feed in the section, and attached a small size 14 sac.  After waiting overnight for the sac cement to rest, I tested the lever mechanism with water and checked for any leaks.   None being found, here is the final product.  Due to the cheap nib, not the greatest writer, I will leave it to the final owner to decide whether to grind the nib a bit to smooth it out.

It measures 5 3/16 inches closed and 6 3/8 inches posted

There are three pictures under the cap ring – two of Mickey and one of Minnie.   Below is one of the Mickey’s.

Below is the barrel decal of Mickey, just above the Walt Disney lever.

Inkograph Pen Company manufactured these in the mid- 1930s.  They are perhaps best known to collectors for their stylographic pens.   I do not own an advertisement for any of the Disney pens produced by them, so can not show them here, but they are readily available to view on the web.  The price that I have seen for these is $1.00 in the advertisements.  At the same time that this pen was produced, Inkograph also had a Mickey Mouse fountain pen and pencil set with Mickey Head and Ears on the top of the cap and a visualated barrel for ink viewing, called an Ink D Cator by Inkograph.  These, more rare in good condition, were referred to in advertising as Style 53, and my pen was referred to as Style 52.

A nice crisp clip imprint ~

The nib, an unimpressive steel one, with no tipping material, once had gold plating.  The imprint is a nice one, though.

The last two photos are combining this pen, with some recent Disney pens.  As a father of three, I have not avoided Disney, and picked up one or two on each visit.  I was surprised that they still had a fountain pen.

Keep an eye out for these if you are interested.  There are numerous recent pens, including fountain pens.   You will also note that Ingersoll made a Disney Pen, after the Inkograph versions, though I have not seen one of these in person.

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Silver 1950s Waterman Skywriter

In my post of March 1, 2012, I wrote about a gold and burgundy 2nd generation 1950s Skywriter and its restoration. This week’s pen is a similar Skywriter, but in Silver trim and red in color.  Remember that the first Skywriters were produced under the Aiken Lambert name after Waterman had purchased them.  These appeared several years later in the late 40s and 50s.  Several colors existed and this pen is an example of a different trim option.

You can see that the pen came apart without too much effort.  Be careful when removing the sections of these pens as the plastic is quite brittle and can crack easily.  I used a heat gun for quite a while before the section finally released.  You can see that it is a friction fit and that the old sac was detached from the section and had dried up.

I cleaned the nib and cap in an ultrasonic cleaner, removed the old sac from the section and cleaned the section and feed, removing the old ink from the inside of each.  I attached a size 14 sac to the section and allowed it to sit overnight.  The next day I placed the section / nib / feed into the barrel and the resulting pen is below.

The pen measures 5 1/8 inches closed and 6 1/16 inches posted.

Below, you can see the pen from the March 1 post underneath this pen.  Differences are the trim, nib color, and the letters USA appear on the clip.

From the earlier post ~

Interestingly, the name Skywriter was capitalizing on the rising popularity of air travel.  Other Pen Companies had also done this as evidenced by the Wahl Eversharp Skyline and the Sheaffer Skyboy. (follow links to previous posts on these pens)

and

The Skywriter spanned a few decades and many of these low priced pens can still be found today in varying models and configurations.  Interestingly, very little information exists on them.   Waterman did not highly advertise them or catalog them, probably due to the fact that they were an entry level pen.  If anyone has any written material in the form of advertising or catalogs on these lines, I would love to see it!

These are surprisingly hearty pens that perform well for inexpensively nibbed pens.  I will be on the lookout for further variations.

See also Waterman Third Generation Skywriter, dated just last month.