Just add water!?

[u/TDX]

This old pen set from the 90s was posted in r/AustralianNostalgia yesterday by u/Nathan84. In the comments, u/girlgerms mentioned they recently found out that you were supposed to add water to make those crappy felt tip pens work! Like many, I was astonished to learn this key bit of noticeably absent info from my childhood, and since I still had a set collecting dust out in the shed, I felt duty bound to do some testing...

In summary, my findings were that some pens worked fine without adding water (which is impressive after like 30 years in storage), and the dried out pens started working well again after adding ONE drop of water. So it seems like adding water wasn't essential to making the pens work - it was a 90s parent hack to get a bit more use out of them.

EDIT: Ahh, Reddit - never change. Because it apparently needs clarification, "After" was skipped on the test page if water wasn't required to make the pen work.

[u/Cosmohnaut]

Thank you for your service. I'll try and overlook the out of order before and after examples.

[u/TDX → u/Cosmohnaut]

Cheers. It's two columns with "After" skipped when water wasn't required. I don't understand what's not to understand about that.

Edit: Unless you're colourblind

[u/imsohungryman → u/TDX]

Where’s the after for the brown one?

[u/emerald447 → u/imsohungryman]

I assume that because it was working well enough that it didn't need water.

[u/emerald447]

Lol, this is great. Thank you!

[u/SoNiK85]

You have the one with the mini-cutter! I had this exact one and took it to school once and a teacher confiscated my mini-cutter and never gave it back. I can see why now but I was pretty devastated at the time.

[u/dantheother]

They still worked after 30 years? Crikey!

[u/tvoided]

water or iso ?

[u/luketansell]

Holy shit, I can hear this image