SpiderPen's Lost Twin and Clip Fix

Spiderpen's Lost Twin and Clip Fix

I found this pen at Walmart, which is remarkably similar in appearance to the well known (among magicians) Spiderpen.
Well, it turns out it was a good thing I found this remarkably similar pen, because I needed to make use of it's plastic clip cover thingy to replace the one that broke on my spider pen. Grrrr.. It broke on the spider pen that was a replacement for the one that was intermittent due to stripped threads in the cap.

It would be great to have a spare pen "housing", since my first Spiderpen suffered (some don't, some do) from stripped threads and loose battery connections. No idea if that's be workable or not though.

To the right we have Spiderpen and it's packaging, to the left is a Pilot pen I found at Walmart. Note the similar pocket clip, the coloring, size and general shape. Even the end cap is very similar. In fact, even the striations in the plastic bear an extreme resemblence. Cool, looks like the clip is just what we need.
You can see that the pen's overall color is a very close match. You can also see the end cap a little better here, wrong color, but otherwise strangely similar.
With the pen open, the differences obviously become more apparent, but the overall cap length is about the same, which is good. To make a Spiderpen from this Pilot would definitely require some heavy modification, which hints at some serious engineering in the Spider pen. Though I'm not going into details here, it's really quite clever in ways you can't tell just by looking at a photo.

So here is a new picture showing what it looks like now. It was a bitch getting the plastic part off the pilot pen, the metal part of the clip holds the plastic "cover" in place with a fork like tension bar.
On the bright side, I now have a unique Spiderpen that looks more like a regular pen now!

Besides the other issues, and this admittedly is a nitpick - but elook at the blister pack it came in. I've never seen anything packaged like this before. They actually glued the plastic blister pack on the wrong side of the package, lol. Someone was asleep at the assembly line.

duh

Here's the side it's supposed to be on !
------------------>

duh again

Lest anyone get the wrong impression, however, I'll state that I made this page when I was good and rightly angry. The first pen was flat out broken, the second faired slightly better but still required some work on my part. These things are not that inexpensive. Overall, however, I think the Spider pen is better than any mechanical thread reel out there. The idea is quite good, the motor itself appears to be quite reliable. The only real problem, and I know I'm not alone because I've seen other posts on the Magic Cafe, (where I have also frequently recommended the product) is that the cap threads sometimes strip. When you get a good pen, it works great. If you get one with bad threads though, there's not much you can do.

Last I've heard, there is now a version two of the Spider pen. I'm still using version one (infrequently, as I don't do magic much) with no problems, but I imagine version two is even better. I just hope it's uses more metal, less (or better) plastic.

Still, what I want to know is, and bear in mind this is directed at magical merchandise in general: where is the quality control these days? I'm not seeing it. I've bought magic booklets with pages missing and or duplicated, booklets that were poorly bound or even with the staples backwards. I've bought items that fell apart after a few uses. It's nuts. You don't typically see this in other industries. Magicians are an easily targeted lot, just the mere promise of the latest and greatest toy has them flinging their wallets (and hearts) open, yet it seems that three out of five magic items that I buy anymore are defective to some degree, in some manner, and require some kind of fixing or return.
You see the same complaints online at sites like http://www.mylovelyassistant.com and http://www.magicreviews.com. There is something very wrong with the industry and it needs to stop!