Editing The Pen Addict 397/transcript (section)

== Retro 51 Document Discussion ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' So we have a lot of recurring conversation this episode, lots of follow-up from last episode based on a lot of the topics, a little bit more detail and analysis of certain things, including the Retro 51 document that I made that was quickly, quickly, quickly usurped by good friend of the show, Alexander Kramer, coder extraordinaire, built a better mousetrap, if you will. So we'll have the link in the show notes. I've sent it out. I've blogged it. I've tweeted it. And we have 555 submissions as of last night when I was checking for people to vote on their favorite finial design for our Kickstarter. We're going to the working, working date for launch of this Kickstarter will be somewhere around episode 399 of this show. So about two weeks from now, we will have this done. This submission is not a final version of what is actually going to be displayed on this pin, but it was to give us a good idea of what needs to be on there, what we need to look at. So I put the, out of the submissions, so with 555 submissions and five choices each, there's, you know, 2,500, you know, individual votes. And I put a link that we will share in the document of the leaders in the clubhouse so far. So the top 10 finial designs are Apollo. Shocker. It was, I was wondering a little bit in alphabetical order. It's like, you know, there's some really quick ones here right out the gate that are pretty great. So Apollo, Buzz, and Dimitri are one, two, three, which are all great finial designs. You know, the image may not have pulled in on this little, little thing I've sent you, but Apollo is the space boot footstep, which is just glorious. Followed by Birds and the Bees, Mercury, Eiffel, Gemini, Rosie, and shocker to me, Dynasty, which it's in, in the end is, it's a really great finial design. And it's from, I think they released that pin last year, early 2019, maybe late 2018. The really blue, blue, blue swirly design of the Dynasty design for that pin. I think that went over really, really well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm super surprised that not even one of the sports ones is in the top list.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They almost universally rank at the bottom.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's wild.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. The baseball one has the most votes. Almost every other sports ball one is in the bottom 10.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm wondering if the basketball one, though, has been split. You got the vote split across three, three basketball finials.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And, you know, I certainly lean towards the red, white, and blue one. I think that was Swish. Swish All-Star.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That was two Swish. Swish. One of my favorites, which is in here, I didn't, I've forgotten the name of this pen. It was, I just said to you when you asked me, it's the red and white striped one. It's called Yipes. Yes. It's one of my favorite, just one of my favorite Retro 51s. It's the one that Idina stole from me. Yep. But the finial isn't, it's the thing where, like, for me, the pens that I have wanted included, they aren't necessarily my favorite finial designs. They are my favorite Retro 51 designs. Right. And I think that it's important that I don't think people necessarily just have to go for their favorite finials if you're thinking of this as, like, a celebration of your favorite Retro 51s. That's kind of where I'm coming at it from.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, right. And I think from the sports aspect of it, which they do so well, the best sports one they've done, I think, and, no, is Stan, which was the hockey mask, right? It's a brilliant design, right? And that's absorbing all of the sports votes, I think. Yeah, that's a good one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's the one that looked like it was made of ice, right? Yep. Yeah, that was very clever. Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, you know, and this is, like I said, this is just to give us a baseline of making sure we cover everything. You know, there's going to be some that make it, some that don't. We have 50 to choose from. Like, I think there's only, like, 55, you know, choices in this drop down.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, so they're basically all going to be in there. Once we've removed some of the, like, duplicates of the sports ones, by and large, there's going to be representation of most of them, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, right. And, you know, I want to be sure to hit some of the special editions. Like, you know, Retro 51 already said that Pink Robots is going. I don't care what you said. Fine. That's going in there. You know, we are getting a lot of calls for the system, you know, finial to be in there. That's great. Wasn't that just orange?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't think so. I think it was just orange because it was the sun.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Maybe. We're getting calls for the London skyline to be in there because it's got the little corgi, I think, on there. On that finial. You know, there's lots of little special editions that I think we'll just have to work in there. So, yeah. So, I wanted to get a good grasp of what everyone wants.