Recently Sailor Ink has been doing some strange things and it’s actually helping me out.

For reasons no one can understand (well, money actually) Sailor has been changing the sizes of its ink bottles. The new bottles are smaller (20 ml), look like little jelly/jam sample jars, and “only” cost 1000 yen (1080 with tax). This means that 50 ml of ink, the old standard size, now cost 2500 yen, or 2700 with tax. The fear is that this means the price of the old new bottles is going up.

Adding to the fear and confusion, Sailor is offering popular ink flavors in the new bottles which makes pen addicts fear these are destined to become the new normal size.

I’ve not tried the new new bottles yet, but given how badly the old new bottles–which look like squat flying saucers–sucked, I’m not expecting the new new bottles will work well with larger pens.

Granted, they may be useful as samples for people not willing to spend 2160 yen on a full bottle, but the pen community panics easily and Sailor has a habit of making odd decisions about bottles and ink flavors.

As a result, I’ve had good luck clearing out a large portion of my over-bought inventory of ink. That makes it hard for me to complain about the new bottles.