pen 84: promarx mega bold gel

okay, so today is one of those days that i kind of wished i had waited a few days to launch another event, in this case it just dovetailed so well with last weeks event that i just went for it. the reason i regret this is that today's pen, the promarx mega bold gel is not the pen that i've been wanting to use all day and i had to make a real effort to stop sketching with the one i'm currently obsessing over and get down to sticking with a plan and following through like an adult - an adult that hoards pens albeit, but whatever, pobody's nerfect.

the mega bold sounds intimidating, the only other pen that i feel intimidated by its name is the signo 207 impact, a pen that i have not gotten around to reviewing yet.

soooo... what can i say about the mega bold?

before finding this gem at the dollar store i had no idea that promarx existed, i looked a little bit for a company website but all i found were amazon sales (which are like eight times more expensive than at the dollar store) and a very pathetic facebook page with five likes, no real information and it includes the company founding in 2004 and that they got their facebook page in 2012... i don't think that i need to say anymore about that, in fact, on the dollar store website they don't even have a listing on this pen - which is odd considering i bought these pens there.

okay, enough with the history lessons.

the mega bold has a 1 mm. tip, the terms: bold, fine, extra fine and micro are not standard for all pen companies and accurate measurement of the pens tend to be in relation to other pens that the company makes, so be aware of that.

the ink, being a gel pen is easily smudged as it dries slowly, the glide is good and it has hardly any bite, a lighter touch seems to work better, but it takes several passes to get really dark, sadly that doesn't really translate to having a good range of value between black and white, i have noticed that when drawing over ink you need to be patient and make a few passes and building up that full saturation is going to take some time - like waiting for the first coat to dry. the pen's flow seems to be hit or miss, sometimes it put a lot of ink on the paper very quickly, which you might expect from a pen called mega bold, but sometimes it needs warming up or quits mid stroke, it also can be messy in that blobs of the ink can build up when its actually working. the pen does have a nice, cheap rubber coating that doesn't do all that much but the grip near the pointy end is nice and effective.

these pens are $.50 each in packs of two, online sales price them at around $8... so yeah, at a buck for two i don't really see anything too wrong with them but at four dollars a pen... are you kidding me? that's like the cost of a micron pen. overall though i would steer clear of this pen, there are far superior gel pens out there and worth the small increase in price.

websites:
facebook really, really sad.
amazon really expensive and out of stock

what they say:

• Rubberized barrel design
• 1.00 mm tip
• Superior gel ink
• Bold and smooth writing
• › See more product details