MONTBLANC'S INK CONUNDRUM?

Montblanc recently released yet another new range of inks: Six shades of blue (although I wouldn't describe the Turquoise as blue, but that's besides the point!), aptly named: 'the Blue Palette'. I thought their range of writing fluids was hard enough to comprehend as it was, with seemingly a million different types of ink, all priced differently. Yet apparently the people over at Montblanc HQ in Hamburg were willing to go one step further. 

Montblanc definitely noticed the increasing attention to inks, because they seem to be more invested in bringing out new inks each year. At the same time, they also changed their ink pricing structure in recent years. It started out with a general price hike across the board -Which is fair enough, that's what all brands do every year or so- but I'm pretty certain somewhere along the road they somehow lost track of what they were doing.

When we break down Montblanc's ink catalog (I'll use the EU pricing from MB's own website for this post to keep it as simple as possible), the standard range of inks (the shoe-shaped bottles) slowly went up in price in the past few years. The standard range recently received an aesthetic overhaul, so they now come with a white box and label similar to how the 'Colour of the Year' (Golden Yellow, Lucky Orange,...) are packaged. They still come in the shoe-shaped 60ml bottles, but the new look also comes with a new price of 20.4€, about 10% more than before the facelift. They renamed some colors and added a few new ones (like Manganese Orange or Pop Pink). Interestingly, a few 'old' bottles are still shown on MB's website, also at the new price. Although I assume those will all eventually be replaced and make way once retailers get through their current stock. For completeness' sake, there's also the two standard range permanent inks (60ml bottles) that go for 26.5€. Which seems like a reasonable upcharge for a permanent ink.

On the other hand, the special editions (like the Writers editions, Patron of Arts, Great Characters and Ink of the Year) have seen a much more drastic price increase in the past years. I seem to recall they once cost roughly the same as the standard range (let's say they used to cost about 20€), but for smaller 30ml bottles. Nowadays, the special edition inks come in larger 50ml bottles at almost double the cost. Ok, you get more for a higher price. That's not too unfair, but in the end the price/ml still went up.

Next up we have the 'Elixir' range. They aren't special editions, but I wouldn't exactly call them standard either. You don't see these very often, probably because they cost 60€ per bottle! The scented ones go for 70€. The price doesn't come from being a limited production, but rather this is Montblanc's premium range and they justify the cost because they are based on natural dyes. In itself, the idea of extracting dyes from nature instead of using synthetic derivatives is pretty cool. But at that price... yeah, no thanks Montblanc. 

© Photos property of Montblanc

All of the above probably still made sense to you, but the new Blue Palette range will undoubtedly throw you off. It looks the same as the new standard range or Ink of the Year packaging, but they use the 30ml bottles from the old special edition inks. And here's the interesting part: from what I can tell they are part of the standard collection, yet at 25.4€ they cost 25% more for a much smaller bottle. I received a few samples of this new range in Appelboom's latest Inxperiment and they are nice colors for sure, but their premium price certainly struck me as odd when I first saw them.

In case I hadn't bored you to death with numbers yet, I went ahead and put all this information in a table where I calculated the price/ml for each ink. Of course, the price/ml of the Blue Palette inks is high, very high. It's almost three times as much as the standard range, and easily surpasses the special edition inks, slowly inching closer to the *overpriced* Elixir inks! 

Don't get me wrong, I love Montblanc inks, yet I couldn't help but wonder why a brand would want to make things so complicated? Montblanc being Montblanc, they probably have a perfectly clever explanation for this pricing maze. My guess it's a gentle nudge towards another price change. I wouldn't be surprised if the Blue Palette is actually MB dipping their toes into the waters to test if lower priced and smaller special edition bottles would appeal more to a wider audience - similar to the tiny Iroshizuku or Sailor bottles. 

Personally, I used to buy most of their special releases but stopped doing so after they changed to the more expensive 50ml bottles. Simply because I didn't feel like dropping 35 euros for every single new release. I'm pretty sure I'd be more tempted to buy special editions at 25 euros per bottle. Of course the absolute price/ml is quite outrageous, but relatively speaking the investment is more bearable and most people probably don't need large 50ml bottles of every single color anyway. 

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this! Would you rather pay less for a much smaller bottle, or get the best price-per-ml deal?

Appelboom is a sponsor of this blog. I received this product free of charge. I was in no way influenced in the making of this article, the opinions shared in this review are completely my own! This article does not contain affiliate links. Use of photo(s) property of Montblanc falls under fair dealing.

ABOUT BIAS AND OPINIONS

Do you trust me?

Going off of the things I have read on social media and forums recently, there seems to be a trust issue developing. Which is really unfortunate because we definitely don't write blogs to start arguments or to tell lies (at least in our pen community that's not the case). In this post I'd like to talk about biased reviews, and how it inevitably correlates to personal preferences. I think this is a bit of a grey zone among pen bloggers, where everyone has an opinion, but nobody has a satisfying answer to all the questions that exist about it.

The stir is based around this: Some bloggers -me included- receive items for free from shops and brands. We review them as we would other items, or don't we? A lot of readers express the uncertainty they feel when they read our reviews: 'are those bloggers telling the truth about that product?' Or are we biased? Are we liars?

Personal opinion and preference

Well, the answer isn't as easy as you might think. Some people don't seem to understand that bloggers are just normal people too. Just like anybody else, we have preferences and we know what we like and don't like. It's inevitable that those preferences become a part of the reviews we write.

We -I'm speaking for myself here, but I think it applies to other bloggers as well- try to give you the objective, hard facts about a product, but these facts are combined with personal opinions to make for an enjoyable review. A completely objective review doesn't exist with pens, or it would have to be a useless and boring specs list and nothing more.

Pens, especially fountain pens, are a very personal experience. For example: I like oversized pens, broad, smooth, springy nibs and a rich ink flow, but you might like the exact opposite. So if I say I like a certain pen, but you buy it and end up hating it, does that mean that I lied? No of course I didn't, but I did express my personal preference and told you how I enjoy that specific product, and in the end it turned out that our preferences differ. In fact, if you'd look at someone's blog as a whole, it's basically one big expression of his or her preferences, and that's not something you can work around, it's part of who we are as a person.

Bias

This brings us back to bias. Bias follows from those personal preferences. We're even biased down to which products we choose to review or not. I won't pick a product that I know I won't like, I don't feel like giving a product a bad review because it's not for me, after all it would probably just leave a wrong impression anyway.

'What about those free products you receive, aren't you inclined to give it a better review than products you bought?' Well first of all, completely off-topic: let me point out that -especially for me as a student- receiving products to review is a neccesary evil. If it wasn't for the brands and shops that choose to support me, I would've run out of products to write about after the first few months. I'm not rich, so I can't just buy everything I want, but I do want to provide interesting and up to date reviews, so there really isn't much of an option there.

To get to the point, are the reviews we write influenced by receiving the products for free? You have to believe me when I say that I try very hard not to be affected by this. But it isn't easy, and I honestly can't promise that I never write something a little nicer than I maybe should've. Again those preferences come into play: if I'm a fan of a certain brand, I might sometimes be a little easier on it than I would with other brands.

I personally try to avoid unconsciously getting trapped in bias by following a certain mindset: I'm a fairly friendly guy (I think at least) and I try to always look for the best in a product. I don't feel the need to completely bash a product because one aspect about it wasn't good. After all, a negative review will also be based on personal opinion. I try to look at as many different aspects of a product while summing up pro's and con's and putting them in the right perspective. This way you can decide for yourself wether or not the product would be something you'd like.

To conclude

I hope I've made my point that it's pretty much impossible to completely avoid bias in reviews, just because people will always have a personal opinion. But there are solutions that could help. The best advice I can give is to always stay sceptical! If you're reading a review to see wether or not you should buy a certain pen, think for yourself: 'Does that pen look comfortable?, from the experience the blogger wrote down, does it sound like it would be something you'd enjoy?' If you think a certain blogger has a different taste and opinion than you, maybe look for other reviews by other bloggers, and compare them to form a more generalised idea. If you read five different reviews and they all say the same thing, it's probably trustworthy (but even then your mileage may vary, it's not an exact science!).

I hope I gave some insight about how I think about all this, and perhaps it helps to clarify how reviews should be interpreted, and what you should and shouldn't expect from me, but also other bloggers. If only there would be a way to write reviews that everyone will agree with, but unfortunately that doesn't exist.

To follow up on the matter of personal opinion, I have updated my about page, at the bottom of the page you can find a link to an article where I specify my personal tastes and preferences for pens, paper and inks. This should be able to help you decide wether or not my personal preferences will differ from yours, I hope it helps!