Where Lamy Daren’t Go…
Blame my father, but I was raised to tease the ones I love. And I have a deep abiding love for Lamy. Their Safari line is an iconic entry level pen, their inks and ink bottles both rank among my favorites, and their high end pens offer interesting designs (and, not to spoil a future review, but their newer Dialog CC may be a pen I never leave uninked again.)
It’s really a credit to Lamy that the majority of complaints they garner are from people wishing they’d do more, like Brad Dowdy calling for translucent colored demo (as opposed to just the clear demos currently offered) or my own perennial calls for the rerelease of their Dark Lilac ink. That’s not to say they are not with out missteps, such as the mechanism on the original Dialog 3 not staying quite airtight (supposedly fixed in later Dialog 3s, and definitely fixed in the Dialog CC), or sticking to colors barely discernible from black (dark blue and dark brown) once they finally started coming out with different color options for their flagship LAMY 2000 pen, or, much less seriously, with their 2022 limited edition Safari release of two monochrome pens under the moniker “Strawberry & Cream”.
There’s nothing wrong with the pinkish red Strawberry pen, or the off-white Cream pen. Both colors suit their pens just fine with colored matched hardware (finials, clips, and center bands) in lieu of the tradition black or silver hardware, and follow after the 2020 special editions, which had similar color matching, and the 2019 special editions which had silver clips, but color matched finials and center bands (the 2021 editions used black hardware in homage to the original two Safari colors.) The big difference, though, is that 2019 and 2020 featured trios of colors that were complimentary of each other but not strictly related; a color pallet, if you will. 2022, on the other hand, is specifically the “Strawberry & Cream” release, however the choice you are faced with when shopping is instead “Strawberry or Cream”. I decided that this was a bridge too far, and took matters in to my own hands.
Below you will see a video of me taking two Lamy Safaris, straight from the shop, and turning them in to the release that Lamy should have given us this year. You are welcome to follow along at home, but I recommend testing first on a cheap used or even broken pen if you’ve never done this before. The process is the same on all safaris, so better to ruin something you don’t care about your first time than to waste a limited edition.
All pens featured in this week’s post were purchased at retail without any special consideration.
