On the Pen being Mightier than a Big Pink Sword

By now I'd be surprised if most of you haven't yet discovered the wonder that is the Bic For Her range of pens.

Why ever anyone thought that designing a pack of pens to resemble feminine hygeine products is beyond me - as is the fact that someone, somewhere, though it a great idea to even market pens directly at women.  Slimmer?  Softer?  WTF?  I can't decide whether Bic are being anachronistically patronising or cleverly anachronistic.  This isn't the 19th century any more, these are pink (and purple, for the 'edgier' woman, presumably), in a way only heretofore approached by a) the 1970s and b) the Argos catalogue "girls' toys" section.  I can only surmise that their misguided sexism is deliberately aimed at the kind of idiot who buys whatever their stupid shiny magazines tell them to, as long as there's room in the bag besides the chihuahua.  And while we're at it, where's my Bic For Him in military drab with retractable pocket-knife, car-key torch and 'tasteful' nude etched on the side?  I feel neglected, though being a man cannot say this in public.  Good job nobody reads this blog.

The happy result of this bewildering use of gendered-product tropes is the sudden effusive plethora of comedic reviews on Amazon - some of my favourites can be read here, here and here.

Pens are not the first product to garner such attention.  This, and this, are both excellent examples of customer favourites.

A curious thing, the internet.  Reading these reviews reminded me of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay.  A Victorian collection of historical examples of similar phenomena, the book is well worth reading still.  The chapter on the beard tax should chime with those sick of governmental pocket-picking, that on the South-Sea bubble those browned off by institutional hubris.  Spriteful Amazon reviewers, I think, would have fun reading Mackay's accounts of buzz-words and popular fads.  If you can find a copy, I recommend it.  Some things do not change so very much; though whether Bic will thence realise their marketing for the retarded relic it is remains to be seen - as does whether the price of a good laugh at such backwardly focused branding is worth the impedance to progress of gender-neutral perception towards a more egalitarian view of humanity.