Ngl i prefer the 2016 version purple on the right.
in which I watch other hobbies learn about the problem of getting consistent dye lots
what you have to understand is lamy dark lilac (2016, the real lamy dark lilac) still gets sold for hundreds of dollars per bottle by resellers when it originally sold for $10. and people bought it because they loved that limited edition ink so much. LDL is one of the grail inks for fountain pen ink collectors, and one of the most common reasons to mix fountain pen ink is to try to imitate it.
but the dyes used in the original lamy dark lilac are no longer even available, and it took several lamy representatives promising it was the exact same ink before anyone told the truth. and remember: THE DYES WERE NEVER AVAILABLE FROM THE START OF PRODUCTION. this is not a matter of inconsistency between batches, lamy knew that the ink would have to be completely different and they called it dark lilac anyway while several of their representatives communicated that it was the exact same ink.
people were fighting and fighting and fighting because it was obviously a different formula, it looked different, but lamy said it was the same, so the person doing the swab of the color must have been wrong, because lamy would never lie. and then when lamy admitted it was a completely different ink, there was fighting about whether or not it is wrong to call a product a re-release of the something while it is completely different. some lamy fans refuse to admit lamy can ever do anything wrong, when they do a ton of shit wrong.
there was no reason to call this ink a re-release of dark lilac other than as a cash grab for any sucker who had the gall to believe that when lamy calls something a re-release of one of the most beloved fountain pen inks of all time, that it would actually be the same ink.
I personally think that if you claim to be re-releasing one of the most famous inks in the world, it should actually be the same ink, or name it something different. lamy deep lilac. lamy new lilac. lamy green lilac because of the green sheen instead of the gold sheen lamy dark lilac became famous for. fucking, anything else
lamy is a piece of work, their quality control has been shit for years, and they make a ton of money by enshittifying their products for people who miss when they were less trash.
damn good thing the entire company just got bought out by mitsubishi pencil company.
Ok, but y'all.
On *high quality* paper? The color isn't even CLOSE to the original. Like, the photo that the WSJ is using doesn't even show it off at its best. If you look at a pen retailer's review, like Goulet Pens, here, there's a really good set of photos on different paper types (because with fountain pens that makes a heck of a difference, trust me).
To pull one image from the review I linked:
Like. Can you look at that and tell me they look even CLOSE to each other? (For folk not into fountain pens, Tomoe River paper - such as this - is considered the best paper you can use)
So yeah. There's RAGE at Lamy for daring to do this to us, even though it's a function of the original pigments no longer being available.
