Not long after the first BP began to sell in the US (that happened on October 29 1945 and the BP was the Reynolds International), the first BP made for ladies appeared.
One of the companies to produce such a pen was Kimberly. Kimberly together with other US manufacturers followed Reynolds success and quickly began producing BP, all that before Eversharp who acquired the rights to the caplillary BP from Biro together with E. Faber , had the chance to accomplish it's research for a reasonably performing BP. Kimberly, together with the other manufacturers were sued by Eversharp, but Eversharp soon realized that if they win in court against these small manufacturers they will be "cleaning" competition for Reynolds, leaving the US market to them alone (Eversharp succeded to sell their first ballpoint only on April 1946).
What Eversharp did was to visit these manufacturers and persuade them to pay Eversharp royalties. During their visit to Kimberly, Eversharp realized that Kimberly had good products and in 1947 they reached an agreement with Kimberly to supply Eversharp with pens and refills. In fact Eversharp refills were entirely replaced by Kimberly refills after 1947.
Here are some ads from 1947 showing the Kimberly Pockette wich was advertized as suitable for men and women, with colors ranges to match the genders. Later in 1953 the Pockette was renamed Kim and is shown in the fourth ad for Inca-Ink:
Ad from 1953 showing Eversharp range of star reporters and retractables together with the short Kim:
and here are my Kimberly Pockettes (green and red with advertisement) and the black 1953 Kim:
These BP are 3.5" closed and 5" when posted:
One can clearly see the Eversharp Kimberly early metal short refill :
And now to another minor manufacturer from Chicago - "Rollit". They had the Petite model made for women. The pen looks a lot like the Pockette, but features the Rollit tip refilling feature. Here's an 1948 ad showing all 3 Rollit models from that period:
And here's my Petite in it's original box (sure resembles a lipstick):
and here's the pen body and cap showing the tip refilling: one has only to pull the refill from the BP by seizing it by it's tip and push a new one in his place:
Now to Papermate: Papermate didn't have a Women's BP untill 1960. Then they added the Lady Capri to their succesfull Capri line of BP.
The Lady Capri came in different mostly pastel colors and had a special pouch with a clip that enabled to carry the pen around.
Papermate used half of the "Piggy Back" refill for the Lady Capri. The Piggy Back refill is made in fact of two refills - here's and ad from 1956 showing the Piggy Back Papermate refill with the original Capri BP
and a nice TV commercial for the PiggyBack refill and Capri BP: Papermate TV Commercial
Here are a series of ads from the early 60's for the Lady Capry:
and here are the actual pens in their boxes and with their pouches and papers. The black one is an early Lady Capri - one can notice the style change in the leaflet that came with the pens
and here we can see the half Piggy Back refill, and on the top the full refill used for the regular Papermate BP (the Piggy back allowed for different colors as we can see here: one refill is blue and the other one red):
Tomorrow I will finish this post with the Parker BP for women.
Edited by Silviu, 01 June 2013 - 04:21 AM.