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Japanese Over-Design FTW: The Beetle 3-Way Highlighter

Because monopoint, monochromatic highlighters are for amateurs

By Rain Noe - August 14, 2015

Never thought I'd have a follow-up post for "Japanese Over-Design FTW: A Highlighter with a See-Through Tip," but apparently the island of Nihon is not through with highlighter design innovation. Pen manufacturer Kokuyo has a model called the Beetle Tip 3 Way Highlighter Pen:

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Jokes about over-design aside, I could actually see this dual-color model being useful for highlighting figures on a sheet—say, using one color to highlight numbers that have exceeded expectations, another color to tag the ones that need improvement.

On the other hand, the intended functionality of the monochromatic models seems a little iffy to me:

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Unlike a lot of unique Japanese products, these aren't tricky to find; they can be had on Amazon, nine bucks and change for a five-pack.

That's for the monochromatic ones. The dual-color jammies are $5.80 for a three-pack.

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Japanese Over-Design FTW: The Beetle 3-Way Highlighter

Tahl Swieca

5 years ago

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Also pretty sure this came out of Kokuyo's design competition, in which the winning product goes into production. Some great stuff has come out of that - could warrant a whole article of its own.

Unfortunately these look better than they actually are. I struggled to get a thin enough line out of the bulb tip to be useful. Seems as if surface tension is the enemy.

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Rain Noe

I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.