King Jim Magnetic Pen Case

Japan is the birthplace of innovative stationery and its amazing to go and look at all of the new and interesting products available. At the moment, this is of course quite difficult to do, so I’m reminiscing about when I was last there and the interesting things I was able to find.

The King Jim Magnetic Pen case was one of the items I picked up last time I was in Japan. Its an interesting concept – the pen case contains an additional magnetic flap attached and the idea is that you can attach it to the edge of a notebook. This is a great idea as many other pen cases designed to attach to notebooks are typically notebook size specific and you need to purchase different sizes to fit depending on what size notebook you wish to use.

While the King Jim can be used on notebooks of different sizes, there will be overhang on anything smaller than 18.5 cm long, which is anything smaller than B6 (18cm). This means that its likely the overhang will catch and get pulled off as the magnets in the case aren’t that strong.

As a pen case, its quite basic. The exterior is made of canvas and its lined with a polyester style lining. There’s enough room for a few pens and accessories – you probably won’t want to overstuff it anyway – if its too heavy, its probably going to fall off your notebook.

Now the mechanism itself – as I mentioned before, the magnets aren’t overly strong and I couldn’t get the magnets to work in any of the hardcover notebooks I tried, even the thinner ones. I could get it to stay attached onto our Cahier notebooks and our Traveler’s sized notebooks, both of which have a softcover – the Cahier has a cardstock cover and the Travelers has a leatherette softcover.

Even though it attaches, the empty pen case alone is so heavy that it bends the notebook cover, so its not an overly sturdy solution. When full, the case just falls off the cover due to the weight.

This was an interesting concept but it might have been better with some stronger magnets, or a small pen section so that the pen case was lighter overall and has less capacity to overstuff it to be too heavy. Unfortunately, as it is, in practise it doesn’t quite work out.