Or if you're in Utah like me, here's the dill.

But we're not talking about pickles today, we're talking about fountain pens.

Particularly five fountain pens that I will never buy again.

And these are popular, well-liked pens from big brands.

These aren't like some knockoff, no-name, terrible things.

These are pens people like.

And I have found big red flags, things, reasons why I will never buy them again.

So I'm going to share these pens with you, share what I do like about them, because the irony here is that I do really like things about most of these pens.

And then ultimately I'm going to tell you what the deal-breakers are, why I think these pens are a bad buy.

And feel free to agree or disagree with me in the comments, I'd love to know what you think.

And if there are pens that you would add to this list, I'd be very curious to know about that.

Okay, pen number one, it's the Kaweco Sport.

If you've been around my channel for a while, you may have seen me make other videos about the Kaweco Sport.

I have not had good experiences with this pen.

And from the comments that many of you have left on my videos, it seems like many of you have also not had good experiences with the Kaweco Sport.

Which is a shame, because this pen is really cool.

I think it's a really great design, it's compact, it's cute, it's comfortable in the hand, and it's actually a pretty smooth nib.

The problem is that it's completely unreliable.

I've had two of these pens, and both of them, I could write a few sentences, maybe a paragraph, and then it would completely dry up and be just unusable.

It was terrible, both times.

If you're dealing with this though, there are ways to improve this pen, and I've made a video about that, which I will put a link to up here.

But even if there are ways to fix it, I just don't think you should buy a $30 pen and then be expected to tune it up.

You know, it should write like a $30 pen.

But it bugs me that a $25, $30 pen needs to be tuned up at all.

It should come ready to write.

Right?

The next on my list is the Pilot Explorer.

And no, this pen is not as popular as some of the other pens from Pilot, but this is a cool pen.

It really is.

I've reviewed it in the past, and for a little while there, I was more likely to recommend the Pilot Explorer than I was the Pilot Metropolitan, which has been a mainstay in the fountain pen community for a long time.

This pen has a lot of great things going for it.

It's a fantastic writer, it's comfortable in the hand.

Some people complain about it feeling a little cheap because it's, you know, I think it's a great pen.

Except that, look at this, the cap does not work.

It's done.

It's shot completely.

And it took about a year for that to happen to this pen.

This was actually my wife's pen.

I got it for her for her birthday, and she loved it.

And then it died.

But because of that, I just can't recommend this pen.

And I will definitely not be buying another one.

For pen number three, we're actually going to be looking at two pens.

The Platinum Preppy and the Platinum Prefonte, however you say it.

They are both very, very similar.

The Prefonte, or however you say it, is just a slightly dressed-up version of the Preppy.

I'm including them both in here because the Preppy is the popular one, but this is the one I actually spent my own money on.

I just kind of decided to skip this one completely because of the complaints I had heard.

But guess what?

I had the same problems with this one, so that's why I'm lumping them together.

So these pens, they write well.

Especially the Preppy is beloved for being very cheap and affordable and a good writer for that price.

The problem is, is that it's a crack monster.

It cracks like crazy.

This cap is completely shattered, and because of that, it doesn't stay on anymore.

And this, the cap cracked on it just a couple months after I got it, if that.

So the longevity on these pens is nothing.

And I get that the Preppy is cheap.

It is a cheap pen.

But for me, I don't want to buy something I know I'm gonna throw in the trash at some point.

I want to buy a pen that's gonna last.

Even if I was brand new to fountain pens and I wanted to try something cheap, I still wouldn't go with a Preppy because it's unreliable.

Because of how crack-prone it is, even just along the barrel I can see some, like, fine kind of spidery hairline cracks all up and down there.

It's extremely brittle.

So even though it's extremely cheap, there are better cheap options, I think, out there.

Even if you have to pay just a couple more dollars, you can get a nice pen that will last and write well and is very, very cheap.

So I think you should go with one of those.

And don't buy these.

These are garbage.

Before we hit number four and five, if you wouldn't mind just hitting the like button, that is an easy way to support my channel and help it grow.

And if you really want to support me, I just launched memberships on my channel.

It's kind of like YouTube's version of Patreon a little bit.

So you can actually like purchase a membership to my channel and get more perks and stuff.

No pressure.

I'm keeping it cheap.

I don't want to make it a burden on anybody.

I want to keep focusing on making free, good content.

But if you would like to help support me even more and maybe help me upgrade my dying computer that I used to edit my videos on, then I would very much appreciate you considering becoming a member of my channel.

Anyway, let's move on to number four.

And this one I feel like is really gonna make people mad.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

It's the Twisby Eco.

These are both Twisby Ecos.

I love these pens, which is, I'm sad that they're on my list.

But the sad reality is that they are both cracked.

The grip sections on these have cracked right around here, and so whenever you put your hand on the pen you get ink all over your fingers.

So it's really sad.

These pens are made out of acrylic, which is very pretty.

It's very crystal clear and wonderful to look at, but it's also very brittle.

I think a lot of people would tell me that the reason these broke was user error, and I get where you're coming from with that.

You can, I think you can make these pens last if you're careful with them, but Twisby prides itself in making pens that people can tinker with and take apart and all that kind of stuff.

And so I was taking the nibs out and swapping them and stuff, and I think it was taking nibs out and pushing them back in that put pressure on the grip section and just eventually cracked it.

I've often heard disclaimers about the feeds and being careful with the feeds if you remove them, but I've never heard anyone say be careful about removing the nibs because these pens will crack.

I think either Twisby could do a better job of making durable pens, or they could do a better job of warning people about not doing certain things with their pens.

But the ironic thing about this is I actually had an issue with the nib of this pen, and I reached out to Twisby about it, and they helped me fix it.

But the way they helped me fix it was pulling the nib out, tweaking a little bit, and putting it back in.

And so I feel like, again, they should have warned me or something that you need to be careful.

So it could have been me, it could have been the pen, I just don't feel like dumping another 30 plus dollars into one of these to find out.

Which is a real shame because I do love the Twisby Eco.

They come out with all kinds of cool editions too.

The Irish Green Edition just dropped recently, or is about to, and it looks so cool.

And I'm tempted, I'm so tempted, but I just don't really have a lot of faith in this pen anymore.

And so I just don't think I'm gonna go for another one.

Okay, last but certainly not least, and this one, if you've watched some of my videos before, is gonna confuse the heck out of you.

Let me explain.

It's the Lamy Safari.

This is my favorite pen, like, ever, of all time.

So why is it on this list?

Well, I'm definitely not done buying Lamy Safaris.

When new editions come out that I think look cool, I like picking them up.

I have a bunch of these and I use them, they're great.

But the extra-fine nibs, not great from my experience.

I've used three extra-fine nibs on Lamy Safaris and they all sucked.

They were not great.

The nib on this pen was scratchy but usable.

I had two other black extra-fine nibs on a different Lamy Safari and they hardly even wrote.

They were just so dry and scratchy and terrible.

So I have sworn off buying extra-fine Lamy nibs, but I do love this pen.

I love it in fine and up as far as nib size.

But no extra-fines.

I don't recommend those to anyone.

Whenever I recommend this pen, I always say, yes, the Lamy Safari, it's great, just don't buy an extra-fine nib.

So, those are my five popular fountain pens that I will never buy again.

What do you think?

Which ones would you add to this list or take off of this list or whatever?

I'm very curious to know what you think and I'll talk to you later.

If you're dealing with this though, there are ways to...