Around this time every year I review Lamy's special edition inks that they release to complement their special edition Safari and AL-Star fountain pens. If you recall, last year Lamy released their "Petrol" fountain pen ink, which ended up gaining more attention for its scarcity than the actual color. This year they have another winner with Vibrant Pink, though it seems to fall a bit outside of the typical Lamy "safety zone," as I'll discuss more below.
Wait, Sheen AND "Glistening"?
What is this madness?
Yep. In a Lamy ink. Until now, the craziest thing about Lamy ink was the bottle, with its incorporated roll of blotter paper. The inks themselves were fairly staid inks that didn't venture into outlandish colors or properties. So when I inked this one up and wrote with it, I was surprised to see a fair bit of gold (or sometimes greenish?) sheen, as well as a subtle glistening/glitter effect.
This photo came out better than I thought it would! You can see a lot of the sheen in the wetter areas of this swab, as well as some of the glistening effect. In normal writing both are fairly subtle.
Some sheeny and glistening inks suffer from slow dry times and smearing, but this one not so much. I've been using this ink to mark up documents at work, and it even works fairly well on cheap paper, so in that respect Vibrant Pink is similar to your standard Lamy ink. You may get a bit of precipitation on the nib (i.e., "gunk"), which is not uncommon with sheeny inks, but it didn't affect the ink flow or writing experience in any way.
Comparison swabs with the other two pinks in my collection: Callifolio Andrinople (top) and Kyoto TAG Imayou-Iro (bottom).
Takeaways and Where to Buy
Lamy makes great inks, and IMHO they don't get enough attention. The limited edition Vibrant Pink is a bit of an outlier, with the gold sheen and shimmer, but I haven't had any issues in the two or three fills of this ink that I've used. Since I have so much ink right now, including several different pinks, I won't be stockpiling extra bottles, but if you're looking to add a pink to your rotation, this is a good one.
You can purchase Lamy Vibrant Pink Special Edition Ink from our site sponsor Pen Chalet. One nice thing about Lamy Ink is the price point - you get excellent ink for $12 per bottle, and that's before any applicable coupon codes or discounts.
Disclaimer: I purchased this ink from Pen Chalet using affiliate credit. I was not compensated monetarily for this review, though this post does contain affiliate links.